


You were an Ocean (when I was just a Stone)

by lavenderforluck



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alpha Derek, Alpha Werewolf Stiles, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Depression, F/M, M/M, Pack Dynamics, Pack Family, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Torture, Wolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 22:16:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 58,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1125014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderforluck/pseuds/lavenderforluck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles comes back. / Look, you want to say, there is a way to be good again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Black Flies by Ben Howard.
> 
> I have no idea what this is, but please heed the warnings. 
> 
> Canon-compliant with season 3A, but all season 3 takes place after Stiles has left for school. There are explicit warnings in the notes at the end that contain spoilers. Please let me know if I haven't included a warning that needs to be included.
> 
> Many thanks to Natasha and Ashley, who read and re-read, who edited, who listened to me about this story.
> 
> This story is for Kathryn, who perseveres. You are so loved.

It had been, coincidentally, the eve of your two month - well - your two month 'thing'. Even though that was  six years ago, but you still remember it so clearly. Your wolf cannot forget. Just after the second moon that Stiles had sat on the front porch of the Hale house. his large saucer eyes a molten amber by dusk. He always told you he didn’t mind the night chill, so he could listen to the wolves howl. It sounded almost like laughter, he said. It wasn’t sad.

 

These are things you choose to remember when you look at Stiles - like little flashes of yesterday that you can’t help but relive, want to relive. Back then, barely a brand new Alpha, deaf, dumb, and dare you say it - in _lov_ -

 

Those memories used to make you feel giddy, the smell of Stiles’ mouth pressed up against your neck for the whole evening, the sliver of a brand new moon just peeking between the clouds of Beacon Hills.

 

The Pack had come over that night for a game-slash-movie night - it had been a Thursday, and you had needed more soda after Isaac drank nearly two liters of Pepsi for lunch, despite your belief kids couldn’t possibly consume that much. Now it doesn’t surprise you, but now is a different story.

 

They were all so young then, so fragile. You were a Pack falling apart at the seams. And now.

 

Stiles had been ebulant, drunk on friends and too much sugar, handsy as he played with his own fingers before ghosting his touch to your hand flexing over the gear shift. You bared your teeth in an almost smile, and he had laughed wickedly. “My, what nice teeth you have.”

 

The dog jokes got old. The Little Red Riding ones never seemed to tire, though.

 

The gas station was closest, though isolated in the trees between the town and the Hale property. You spent a lot of time here when Laura had just died and you weren’t in the mood to get stared at. Stiles had been sixteen, still smelt like a child, brinking on adulthood. By eighteen he just smelled like yours, and you weren’t so sure if it terrified you or made you feel alive.

 

The lights in the gas station overhang were flickering, and that should have been your first sign  something was wrong that night. But it hadn’t registered, because you were too busy watching the way Stiles nearly vibrated out of the car, excited and restless as you pumped the tank and he ran in to get more Pepsi.

 

A cruiser was parked kitty corner to your camaro, and you could smell that linen-and-lemon scent that softens your stomach even on a rough night - it’s off, less magnetic, and you realized it was Sheriff who stood near the hood. He hadn’t seen you straight away, focused on his pager.

 

Stiles’ father hadn’t been particularly old, though Stiles acted like he was fragile and ancient, and handled him like his skin was made of tissue paper. You remember having a great Uncle like that, on your mother’s side, whose smile and old hands made you feel protective and tender inside. Before the fire, there were a lot of things you could relate to. Before the fire, there were a lot more reasons to bother.

 

Stiles was teaching you, though. His smile flickers in and out of your mind like a camera reel. You can still remember him pulling his wallet out of his back pocket, his shoe nearly kicking the counter as he juggled however many bottles he picked up. From the smell of the plastic, it seemed to be three.

 

It’s these little things that distracted you. You were a new Alpha, not quite a warrior just yet. Stiles noticed his dad there and ran over to say hi, and that was when two identical pick up trucks pulled up on either side of the cruiser and the camaro.

 

There’s a split second of silence before you managed to yell, “Stiles, get down!” before the lights on the overhead flickered out and went black, just the moon to illuminate them. The memory is murky, dark.

 

The trucks opened to reveal  four men who climbed out brandishing guns and you can still remember their unfamiliar upstate stench. They held their weapons with so much arrogance you could smell it. It was a deep rooted, ugly, smog.

 

Stiles didn’t get down, but stood by his father.

 

The sheriff began to negotiate, his voice soft, older, “I’m going to ask you to please put your weapons on the ground,” he had motioned steadily, before a piece of metal collides with his upper cheekbone and hew as efficiently silenced. It was barely fractured, but you could hear the blood vessels burst under the skin, pop pop pop. It should have bruised.

 

Stiles had yelled as his father fell to the ground. The three liters of soda tumbled to the  concrete, plastic bouncing and rolling in front of you. There was a blood drop on one of them, and for some reason, that has always resonated with you.

 

Anger was like wildfire and your blood was pumping, ferocious, in charge. It anchored you as you roar, cutting through the night sky. Your betas would hear. Yow knew the they would hear, and they would come.

 

“Everyone get down on the ground,” One of the men shouted through a thick mustache. “Or we will shoot all of you.”

 

Your eyes flashed red and your nails grew into claws, but two of the men were already on you. “On the ground, Alpha. Don’t think we don’t know what you are.”

 

They weren’t Argents, from the scent of them, woodsy and unkept. The rage that simmered underneath their skin wasn’t calculated, just bloodthirsty. It burnt the inside of your nose, that smell. It reminded you of blonde hair.

 

You couldn’t see the Sheriff or Stiles with the gasoline pump in your way, but you hesitated. One of the men let off a warning shot into the sky. If your betas weren’t running before, they were now. Five minutes, you had foolishly estimated. Five minutes, that's was all you needed to stall.

 

It went south from there. You knelt to the ground, gun brandished at your head and at your heart. You can still smell Stiles on your neck. Of all the ways to die, hunters were not going to be your end. Not yet.

 

You thought you were finally seeing your horizon. Kate Argent was finally rotting in hell. Peter had disappeared, smelling of dark magic and death. Jackson was a beta, blue eyes rolling upwards every time he felt sentimental - these things, you could feel, you could feel, you knew you were due for a good ending. Retribution. Happiness had teased itself on the tip of your tongue.

 

Stiles. And Stiles.

 

He was belly down on the concrete when you lied down, belly first on the concrete. Your view had been limited from what you could see of him from underneath the camaro. His eyes were dry and angry, mouth pinched and shoulders taut, newly formed 18 year old torso broad and tense. He still had that child smell around the edges of him. Like milk and bath soap and his mother. Underneath all the layers of teenage boy, it had been there. It had held you.

 

Six years to the day, and you can still remember every single detail of that night.

 

The sheriff was on the ground too, cheek cradled by his hand Stiles fumbled for a second as the men talked with themselves, arguing on the best tactic. They’ve caught the Alpha, you had gathered, but they didn’t know what to do with you.

 

You wanted to hiss at Stiles to be still, but you had realized he’s retrieving his phone, letting it dial as it sat open underneath the car. Stiles, with the courage caked underneath his fingernails like dirt. With the brain that churns its wheels a million miles an hour. Stiles, with his bleeding human organs. With his breakable skin. Jesus.

 

“Hey - what are you doing, kid - “ and this is where you wish you could go back and fix all this, change the events of the this night. The hunter had rushed over with his gun, brandished it like he’s never used it before - so you took his chances and sliced his achilles heel with one claw. He went down, the gun went off. It didn’t ricochet - it didn’t, it didn’t, and it was supposed to ricochet into the concrete, the car, you, for god sakes, but it didn’t.

 

It hit skin. It doesn’t just hit skin, it tore through it, the bullet casing separated from it’s original form and into a large muscle. A pectoral muscle. A heart.

 

One of the sodas split on the concrete, and it mixed with the blood. Stiles was crying, and you can still smell it instead your head now.

 

Your whole body willed it to not be his heart, please please let him live, not today, not with the horizon just there - you had begged, as you crushed the skull of the man with the torn heel before you took out two more. Isaac had emerged from a parting of trees and helped you kill the next one, ripping his arms from his torso before he fell, dead. Scott and Jackson and Erica and Boyd surrounded you. Erica had screamed.

 

Maybe this was your fault - by wishing it wasn’t Stiles heart meant that it was - that it was the Sheriff's, and there was blood from his mouth and he kept coughing, unable to sit up. Stiles -  his crying -  blood on his mouth - and fingers and - he couldn’t seem to press hard enough on the wound. The tear tracks, they gut you. They gut you.

 

“Turn him,” he’s demanded, screamed it at you. “Turn him! He’s...he’s dying.”

 

You knelt down, numb and smelling like someone else’s blood, not a scratch on you. The Sheriff was looking up at his son, throat flooded on his own blood. “It might not work,” you tried to explain, because you could already hear the faded, slowed beats of his heart. “He could still -”

 

“Do it, Derek,” he cursed. He grabbed your wrist and squeezed. It was only a human grip, nothing that hurt - but his bloodied, tacky palmprint burnt like an imprint. Your eyes flashed red.

 

You bit the Sheriff’s wrist, as Stiles sat too still, looking on with grave intent. His eyes were like liquid gold, burning you, hurting you; his heart beat erratically against his chest, every blip a lie. Looking back, you realized he knew, he knew his father was going to lose, and yet.

 

The Sheriff took one last shuddering breath, and you could hear Erica crying, Jackson’s stifled gasp, Scott as he choked on his own tongue. Your Pack, you could hear them, you could feel them, and they all knew. His heart had stopped beating. The sheriff closed his eyes.  You could almost hear the crack in Stiles’ soul. You hadn’t look at him, your mouth still coppery with blood, but you wish you had.

 

Isaac and Boyd had thrown the clothes away in the dumpsters behind the mini mart while Erica and Jackson burned the bodies and drove the trucks to opposite ends of town. Scott called 911 and explained there’d been a blitz attack on the sheriff and they needed an ambulance.  To human ears he'd been nearly inaudible.

 

Stiles hadn’t looked at you. You couldn’t smell him at all suddenly, just leather, and ash, and dirt, and concrete and blood. Your nose was burning. So were your eyes, wet and hot and you hadn’t know what it meant.You didn’t know what any of this meant.

 

This is where the memory starts to end. This is where you try so hard to forget. The leaving.

 

“You need to get out of here, Derek,” Scott hissed at him, as he knelt by his best friend, his first brother. “This won’t look good for you.”

 

He’s right, and you hated him for it then and you still kind of hate him for it, even though he’s finally in your Pack. You hadn't argued, but you wanted to.

 

You kept trying to look at Stiles, but he wouldn’t look at you. He wouldn’t. So you pushed your dinner back down your throat, heavy hearted, and climbed into your car. You reeked of gunpowder and shame and you drove off before you could think twice about what’s smart and what’s the right thing to do. All the lines had blurred.

 

His red sweater was in the passenger seat, a lifetime away when you were just driving to get more soda. And Stiles had smiled the whole way, fingers gripping your wrist as you drove, eyes chasing the lights outside as they flickered in and out of the trees. Your eyes stung, and you didn’t know what that choking, hateful feeling welled up inside you was, making your eyelashes cling to themselves, but you didn’t want it. You still don’t want it.

 

The night sky bled behind you as you drove back to half a reconstructed home. You couldn’t think of anything but the blood on Stiles mouth for the rest of that night.

 

This is where the memory ends. You hadn't known it at the time, but this is where it all starts to end.

 

-

 

The smell of it wakes you up. It’s dawn in the beginnings of Fall, so instead of the sky being your favorite type of blistered red that Spring and Summer offer you this early, it’s a cold gray, sun enslaved with thick dark clouds, the soil and trees wet from the rain last night.

 

All of that is background noise, though, compare to the whiff of Alpha that crosses your nose.  You sit up, alert, listening. The smell is strong, powerful, and foreign - you don’t recognize the earthy tint of the Redwoods Pack, nor the dusty scent of the Southern Oregon Packs that sprawl down for a warm weather winter vacation sometimes, and they would have sent a message first. It's etiquette. This smell is singular, and alone.

 

Isaac pokes his head out of his bedroom as you exit yours, ears and brow already shifting. “Erica had a girls night with Allison yesterday,” he informs Derek as they both bound down the stairs, “She’s still in town.”

 

“That’s okay. It might not be a threat,” you ground out. Boyd is near the West facing property. He smells like sweat and soil, but not fear, nor anger. Either he’s not threatened or he doesn't know yet. You stand on the front porch, closing your eyes, looking for a source in the trees.

 

The scent is fast paced and moving, darting around so it’s nearly impossible to pin down an exact location. This is a smart tactic used by an incredibly experienced Alpha, one with a lot of power and wisdom on their side. But he’s alone, from what you can tell, and that is so far, your only advantage.

 

Isaac clicks his phone off, shuffling it into his pocket and disrupting your focus. “Scott’s on his way. Just in case.”

 

You nod, before the smell becomes so strong and so pungent to your nose, danger danger danger, your senses scream, power threat attack power.

 

Boyd rounds the corner, already completely shifted, his dusty gray fur blending in with patch of Birch trees he emerges from. He looks to you, ready to hunt the scent, and you nod once, discreetly, before shifting and taking off into the trees to the East. They follow, and since they’ve  it’s been a while  that their running hasn’t been anything but joyful, they’re clumsy at first.

 

The scent still bounces off the trees, almost like it’s teasing as you chase it, darting in between brush. You can only smell the Alpha, and it isn’t until you actually get a glimpse of it that your heart jumps into your throat. It’s running. It’s running fast.

 

You barely get a good look at the wolf you and your Pack are chasing before it’s gone again, twisting into the leaves. It isn’t until you’ve made the arc that you realize it’s leading back home, back to the house, and you howl, picking up tenspeed.

 

You’re gaining on the wolf, and it’s slowing down, the smell strong and harsher in your shifted snout, so strong that you almost want to pull away if it wasn’t for the instinct to defend and protect keeping you running. _Pack honor family attack protect hurt_ running through your veins as if it’s blood. And it keeps you going.

 

Isaac is faster than you, leaner in many ways in both human and wolf form, and you duck your nose for a moment to let  him speed ahead of you, nearly on the foot trails of this wolf, heart stuttering in his chest and in your ears, saliva filling your mouth as the trees part to display the Hale House in the distance. Isaac finally catches a good wind, propelling himself forward and leaping onto the neck of the wolf.

 

They roll on the ground as the Alpha bucks Isaac off of him, snapping his teeth and hackles rising as he stands off around the three wolves. He snaps at Isaac, teeth sharp and one of his canines broken. His long, lean body is covered in scars that scream danger to you, and you charge at the Alpha, taking him down and wrapping your teeth around his neck, ready to deliver the last strike, when -

 

\- A familiar roar courses through the yard, rattling the windows of the house as Scott charges, and knocks you off of the Alpha, teeth and neck bared.

 

You round on Scott, ready to attack him for such insolence, such arrogance, such disobedience to his Alpha, to you, when he shifts. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Derek?” he yells at you, standing in front of the Alpha with his back turned.

 

Shock and disbelief is thrumming strong within Isaac and Boyd, you can feel it, at the fact that Scott’s back is turned to something unknown. It’s as if - as if he knows the wolf - or isn’t afraid or -

 

“Don’t - don’t you realize who this is? You could have killed him.” Scott yells, pink in the face and beside himself. You paw forward, and Scott's eyes flash yellow, warning, as if he’s made alliance to this Alpha - and you check - his heart still beats in your ears. He is still yours, after six years, he is still yours.

 

You charge anyway, despite Scott. The Alpha whines as your teeth fit around his neck again, and Scott can be heard in your ears, roaring, rearing back to attack. You can feel it, the prickling tickle on your back, your hackles rising, looking into the eyes of your strange Alpha before snapping his windpipe.

 

And then he shifts. He shifts back his human form, naked and comparatively smaller than his wolf, and it’s not a giant, dangerous Alpha you’re looking into the eyes of, but wide, human ones, with irises the color of hot amber - and no - no.

 

You round off him, a whine cut off in your throat as Stiles heaves on the grass below you, unable to catch his breath. You can’t hear his heart. You can’t smell him. You were always able to, and now, and now -

 

“Kill me,” he sputters, “Kill me, Derek, and get it over with.” His voice is deep and guttural and something so different and foreign to the lighthearted tilt of that Stiles you remember years - years ago.

 

You’re not going to kill him. It will only beg more questions, all the questions you wanted and wondered and nearly choked on, an ulcer burning an acidic hole into the lining of your stomach. You back off, as Scott picks him up, handling him delicately like he might break. And he looks like he might snap in half - skin pale and as ashen as the fur on Boyd’s coat, sallow and unhealthy like the frozen surface of a dirty pond, rib cage and hip bones swollen and obvious through his thin skin.

 

“Are you going let me bring him inside?” Scott asks, eyes flashing, “You can smell the hurt on him. Are you going to let me help?”

 

You bow your great head, heart aching in your chest. Isaac has shifted, jogging to help Stiles up the steps and inside. Boyd, still a wolf, turns to you, waiting. You nod, barely a tilt, but Boyd understands, always does, and shifts before hurrying in after them. You wait there, letting the Fall morning air whip your fur, your stomach sour and your brain howling inside your head. You feel like you’ve just had your intestines strung out in front of you, and that has really happened, and it still doesn’t feel anything like this.

 

You start to run. You know you’re the Alpha, and you shouldn’t do that, and you’ve left your Pack vulnerable to another, very powerful Alpha wolf, and you should be there, but it’s Stiles, and it’s six years, and you can’t seem to focus on anything but the trees and the way the forest becomes quiet, silent and wanting for you to run through it. Every green leaf you see seems to have blood on it, and everything in your mind just reeks of Stiles that you start to howl, and after that, you can’t seem to stop.

 

-

 

It’s Erica who’s waiting for you on the front step of the Hale house when you trot up, a thin sheen of sweat on your human legs as you walk up to her.

 

“You’re...clothed. Kinda,” she remarks, gesturing to the pair of sweatshorts you’re wearing. It was her idea, after all, to stash clothes all over the woods, inside tree logs and underneath foliage, in case they ever needed to become presentable and human for any visitors.

 

Though the Hale house had been rebuilt years ago, mostly by your Pack and aided by an electrician who knew your parents, rarely did people stop by to visit. If they suspect it is haunted by ghosts, then they would be right.

 

“You’ve been gone all day,” she says, and she looks as tired and as confused as you feel. It’s not natural to have visiting wolves - foreign wolves - inside the house. You carefully remind yourself that until you know more, it isn’t - like how it used to be - it isn’t Stiles. Your heart wills it, beating excitedly at the prospect, but you don’t allow it.

 

Stiles is a subject that you warned your heart to stay away from. And it should listen.

 

“I know that look, Derek,” she sounds weary, and you look at her. You still haven’t said anything, but Erica is known to speak to you unprompted. Sometimes it’s better that way. There are days where you walk around crippled, still unable to find your words, to breathe. “You’re going to kill yourself with all that grief. Do yourself, - us all a favor, and don’t. Just, don’t. It’s not your fault. Whatever he’s going to tell us, whatever happened to him, it’s not your fault.”

 

She stands up, pulling the sleeves of her cardigan around her arms and grabbing your wrist, pulling you up the stairs. She pauses, turning to look at you for a moment, brown eyes familiar in their tenderness. “And it never was.”

 

Grief hangs around you when you enter the front door. Stiles is on the couch and in your head he’s still so young looking, though the boy in front of you - the man in front of you is littered with battle scars, thin white lines and cuts that have healed over other scars. To the human eye, they would be nearly invisible, but you can see them, and it feels like your insides might project themselves onto the floor. Scott moves towards him, pulling him close and soothing him.

 

Isaac whimpers almost inaudibly, shifting in his chair by the window. He can feel you. He has always been sensitive enough to feel you.

 

Sometimes, when he was a pup,  it was as if his skin was still healing from the years and years of bruises his father had bestowed on him, when the Hale house was barely a house, he would curl up next to you, seeking comfort, a body, a person to absorb his nightmares. He was your firstborn. You look to him now, grown into his body, scars faded, nightmares gone, and you turn up the corners of your mouth. It’s okay. The gesture says. It’s okay.

 

Scott holds him closer. You swallow the pain you feel in your throat for Isaac’s sake. It doesn’t help the throbbing, pulsating beat in your temple.

 

“I was waiting for you,” Stiles says from his position on the couch. “Do you still want to kill me?”

 

You sit on the edge of the coffee table, elbows on your knees and chin tucked. You shake your head no, unable to speak.

 

Stiles hums to that, rubbing his face. Scott stands near him, but his eyes are far off and distant like he doesn’t recognize the person in front of them. And he doesn’t, you surmise, he doesn’t. You all want answers. Stiles' eyes are hard around the edges in a way you don’t remember them being, his neck scared like it was once ripped out and sewn back together.

 

“I was waiting for you to come back before I told them anything,” Stiles says, gesturing with his chin, “And I wanted to ask you if I could stay here.”

 

You suck in a breath, “You’re another Alpha, in my house. Home,” you amend, because it is home, everything about the Hale property bleeds home, like it used to, before you were sixteen. Stiles is asking a lot of you, to harbor another Alpha in your den, and he knows it, too, from the look of determination on his face. He is weak. He is seeking protection. Your wolf whines and urges you to tell him to leave. To never come back. But it won’t fix this now.

 

Stiles nods. “Yes.”

 

“Where’s your Pack?” you growl, you can’t help it, so overwhelmed with anger and confusion and those things have always been your vices, have always been your crutch. Stiles doesn’t shrink back from you, doesn’t so much as flinch - but you don’t expect him to. He never was afraid of you as a human.

 

His eyes flicker, a nerve touched, “Dead. Or lost. Or good as dead,” he says gravely, eyes turning down to his chest. “I’m no threat to you, Derek. I don’t want your Pack.”

 

You feel your eyes narrow, an irrational bubble of anger piling in your windpipe. “Then why come here? Why come to us?”

 

Scott opens his mouth like he wants to speak, but he won’t, he knows his place, even though this is supposed to be Stiles - supposed to be his best friend, his brother, and you only had a glimpse of what could be, the human in the Pack, the useful member Stiles could have been, so you can only imagine how Scott feels. You bite down on all the hurt Scott is transmitting, glaring.

 

This question deflates Stiles, “I don’t know if I can explain to you what has happened. I escaped, and I ran, I didn’t stop running. I thought I was going to die before I got here. It was by miracle alone that I didn’t.”

 

“Where did you escape from?” you demand. Stiles' eyes flicker again, unpleasant.

 

“There are scarier things out there than rogue hunters and random mythical creatures that cross your path, Derek. There’s a war coming.”

 

-

 

You don’t sleep that night. Too tense, shoulders thrumming and unable to relax. Your head hurts. Everything hurts.

 

You think of when you were seven and an Alpha had come to your mother for help after her entire Pack had been slaughtered. Your mother, through your child eyes had been tall with broad shoulders, her long hair braided down her back with streaks of gray in it. In retrospect, she looked like one of the First Nation Packs that lived farther south in Nevada. You never did ask her where her roots were from. You were too preoccupied figuring out where you belonged.

 

Your mother, being strong and broad shouldered and the Alpha, had taken her in, the lone Alpha, protected her, made her part of her Pack. Your Aunt Sheila was never truly an Aunt, but you counted her as among the family you lost in the fire. She always used to smell like other wolves - buried underneath the Hale scent, something like popery and clay. She carried around the smell of the wolves she lost like a burden.

 

You distinctly think of Stiles’ old linen and lemon smell, sharp and almost acidic in your memory. You never could bring yourself to ask your Pack if they could smell it, if you carried it in the haunches of your shoulders like your aunt did. Just because you don’t live in a burnt out husk anymore doesn’t mean you don’t feel like one from time to time. Sometimes you lose your words for days at a time. Sometimes you want to get lost.

 

-

 

Stiles is staying in the bedroom farthest from yours with a bay window that looks out to the backyard. It has the most stunning views of the trees on the Hale property. You would know; you built that room just for him.

 

He’s sitting on the desk chair staring outside into the trees like he can see things you can’t. His eyes are worn and there are dark rings underneath like half-moon bruises. He looks to you when you stand next to him, a courtesy. He knew you were coming probably before you even came upstairs.

 

“The birds sing here,” he gestures to the trees, “So close to their predators.”

 

You say nothing; you’re not sure what you want to even say to this kid. Man.

 

He turns to you, his cords of muscle jaunt underneath his bony shoulders, his protruding collar bone.  You force yourself to put your gaze elsewhere. Anywhere. He looks starved.

 

“You probably need answers,” Stiles says, “But I’m not sure you’re going to want them.”

 

You have no fucking idea what that means, of course you want answers. Stiles left Beacon Hills (don’t say you, he didn’t just leave you, he left everyone, everything) without a word to go off to an East Coast school and returns a wolf. A wolf who looks like he’s gone through hell. An Alpha.

 

“Try me,” you say. He sighs.

 

“I got into Northeastern. You remember,” Stiles mumbles. You remember - hearing about it through Erica one evening because you hadn’t seen him in weeks - almost two months after the night at the gas station. You never did say goodbye. Maybe that’s half your problem. “I got bit the first few months at school, and I thought, shit, you know, I leave California to get away from these fucking wolves and here I am one. Alone.”

 

He sounds bitter. You don’t blame him. Fate has a funny way of absolutely shitting on everything.

 

“That doesn’t explain your status. Or why you look...”

 

Stiles' smile is full of teeth and resentment. There is no light that you remember, no camera reel. “Like I’ve been put through a meat cutter?”

 

You don’t say anything. So he continues on.

 

“For the first three years of college  I was in this small Pack that lived in a Boston suburb. Then one night I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and these - the people that caught me. They make the Argent family look like guppies.”

 

He tells you in gross detail, his voice casual like he’s telling you the weather forecast. Human purists, the underground prison, and the winter that seemed to go on for two years. You can almost picture it, but you don’t want to: the way they kept these wolves like dogs, experimenting on them, making them fight each other, slicing them open for experiments - to create an army. To create the ultimate Pack. You want to shudder, but you don’t. He continues on, relentless. Steely.

 

“We were experiments. Case studies. We would fight in these cages for practice or to improve our skill and stamina, but only one of us was allowed to leave alive. They made us kill any of the pups born inside,” Stiles’ eyes are gray and glazed over, before he starts choking. “Rape was rampant between the wolves and the guards and even I - as strong as I had gotten, couldn’t protect everyone.”

 

He looks like he tried, if his scars are anything to go by. You feel like throwing up. Your eyes sting like they did the last time you spoke to Stiles - in the woods, in the dark, smelling of split Pepsi and blood. You can barely keep the violent throbbing in your head at bay.

 

Finally, you say, “How’d you escape them?”

 

Stiles closes his eyes, “They began to trust me. They began to use me as an enforcer, I had more access to more parts of the Underground. I thought I was going to lose my mind. I hadn’t seen the sun in two years, maybe two and half. And then one day...Jackson was just there. They had captured Jackson.”

 

“Jackson - our Beta? Where is he?”

 

He doesn’t know. He tried to protect him best he could, but Jackson was spiteful, vicious, and not  strong enough to protect himself. They beat him down eventually. They beat everyone done eventually. It wasn’t a week after Jackson had been there, that he had been taken for a new experiment - when one night  the whole place was set ablaze. And then he knew, “Lydia.”

 

Of course. Lydia. Of course. You can see it: fire burning as bright as her hair, eyes half-crazed as she searched for Jackson and took out anyone in her way. She probably didn’t expect Stiles, the way you hadn’t: Strong. Weathered. Broken.

 

Stiles wipes his nose, but he isn’t crying. He isn’t anything. “I don’t know where they are. I just started to run. I ended up here.”

 

Then he says, “I’ll heal as much as I can, then I’ll leave. I won’t bother you anymore than I have to.”

 

You don’t want that; you want him to stay here and smile and eat something so he doesn’t look so slim, you want the light back in his eyes. The wolf wants it even more: it wants to run alongside Stiles, play and jump and claim him, protect him, help him. You bite down on the word stay and instead settle for, “Okay.”

 

It’s the opposite of what you want. But then since when do you ever get what you wish for.

 

-

 

You’re half a second away from a shift when Erica slams the screen door and runs after you. You can hear her heart pumping, injustice. Indignant. Defiance.

 

“‘Okay?’”she calls after you, and you ignore her, picking up your pace. “Okay? You lied through your teeth, Derek, you don’t want that - we just got him back and you’re going to let him leave?” She yells at him, and then she says, “Don’t pretend like - we can all feel it.”

 

You whirl on her, eyes flashing, and she stands her ground, her proverbial tail out and bristled. Maybe you taught her too well not to be afraid of the big bad wolf. Maybe she’s seen you wounded too many times. Maybe she knows better than you.

 

“When he left,” she continues, eyes flashing gold, brow scrunched in pain, “It was awful. You - we - for all of us. Promise me we won’t do that again.”

 

“Erica,” you growl, unable to express yourself; always, unable to comfort her, your beta, your second born. Your heart lodged in your throat stops you from saying anything else. God, sometimes you feel like you’re just learning to be an Alpha all over again. He’s been here - 22 hours and counting, and you’re stuttering. You’re unsure. All of a sudden you feel twenty three again and barely a man.

 

“No,” she shakes her head, “No, promise.”

 

You almost lie, but she would hear that a mile away, so in tune with your heart as it is - so you say, and goddamnit your voice does not break, “I can’t.”

 

“You’re our Alpha,” Erica accuses, bursting to the brim with anger and resentment and passion and pity.

 

“Yes,” you admit, somewhat reluctantly. You know where this is going.

 

“Then _act_ like it,” she whirls around, blonde hair a blur, stomping back to the house. She’s still wearing her pink robe Isaac bought her last year for Christmas and her slipper boots. She makes you cower, Erica, and she hasn’t even had her morning coffee.

 

-

 

You spend the day running.

 

-

 

You come home and slip into your room through the window, dressing quietly. You can smell burgers on the gas burner, and Allison’s tinkling laugh as she flips beef, along with happy scent Scott has every time both Isaac and Allison are with him, like he’s positively humming. The toilet flushes upstairs, Isaac, you guess, from the long gait, and Boyd is in the study with Sam Cook turned down low, he’s reading through the GQ delivered to the house yesterday from the sound of the pages turning.

 

At the kitchen table is Stiles, wearing one of Isaac’s t shirts and peeling apples and throwing them into a large mixing bowl filled with melted butter and brown sugar. He’s got a large scar running down the side of his scalp where his short hair won’t grow, along with a matching scar from his left eye to the apple of his cheek. When he smiles, it makes the left side of his face slouch slightly. You want to pick him apart, search for the boy inside, the one  you lost six years ago.

 

You don’t smell him like you smell the others. It makes you on edge.

 

“There you are,” Allison says, balancing a bottle of ketchup on her swollen belly before Scott places it on the table. “We’re cooking a nice dinner for our guest of honor.”

 

Allison has this habit of taking big issues and turning them into small ones. She literally shines, not just from being mated with Scott, or the glow of being an almost-mother - but also because she has to. You understand. Sometimes you wonder if she is an incarnate of the goddess your mother used to tell you about - Selene, the goddess of the Moon and commander of wolves. But she’s less luminous, more real; she’d be Artemis - one of the hunt, nature, and motherhood.

 

“Are you saying our dinners aren’t usually nice?” you snipe, baring your teeth in an almost smile. Allison rolls her eyes, moving around the kitchen. You study her for a split second; her human body and blue veins with her red blood running through them - her fragile blood. Both Scott and Isaac watch her out of the corner of their eyes. Scott thinks the child won’t be a wolf, but you know otherwise, tiny hummingbird heart already in tune with yours. You won’t tell him because he fears her body won’t be able to handle a pregnancy like this.

 

And he’s right to fear it.

 

You all sit down, Boyd coming in from down the hall, Erica smelling like hydrangeas and dirt under her fingers, slamming her pruning shears on the table. Isaac is slouchy and looks to you for a moment before coming in to hug Stiles, who reciprocates. You’re unable to look at them embracing, even though Isaac is positively thrumming - he’s always been addicted to the touch, despite his upbringing during his human life. As wolves, as Pack, those human memories fade and become inconsequential as time moves on. But a wolf never forgets anything.

 

It makes life poignant and sharp and in your case, painful. You can still remember your mother braiding her own hair, arms above her head as she weaved her gray strands, and sometimes ribbon in between the plaits. Sometimes she’d braid Laura’s hair, too, and Cora’s, when she would sit still.

 

It reminds you of when other people told you that a name like Derek was one you would grow into; that Derek was a man’s name, not a boy’s. Your mother had taken you aside and explained to you that she waited a couple days after your brothers and sisters were born before she named them. Laura because of her beautiful reddish brown hair, then just tufs, because it reminded your mother of the every changing Laurel trees. Noah, a comfort, a resting soul who always took care of others. Derek, the ruler, the powerful - and Cora Emmalee, the all encompassing, the whole universe. As the baby of the family, it was true, you realized later that day. The whole family did orbit around her.

 

Your mother was pregnant with her fifth child, a late, harsh pregnancy when you met Kate Argent. “I’m going to name him Charlie,” she told you one morning over her tea, swollen belly against the sink. She winked at you, “It means warrior, and fighter. We’re both going to survive this pregnancy if it kills me.”

 

That memory is tinged with ash, now. It’s all tinged with smoke and ash.

 

Looking around your Pack, you should feel like a ruler. But instead you feel weak. It is only Stiles’ voice that breaks you of your reverie, bringing you to the present day. The mood is suddenly dense with tension, everyone pulled taut and frozen, eyes on you.

 

Stiles’ heavy lidded golden eyes fixate on you. “I just asked whether or not you had told them what I told you, what happened.”

 

“No,” you blink, feeling your face grimace on its own accordance, “I hadn’t told them.”

 

“Don’t you think it’d be important,” he drawls, “given I’m a non-Pack wolf in your den.”

 

You feel your hackles rise, glaring at him. You can feel Erica look at Boyd out of the corner of her eye, Scott nearly out of his seat, wanting to stop an argument before one starts. Allison is eating, scrapping her fork along the plate in a way that turns your insides.

 

“Are you criticising the way I run my Pack?” You snarl.

 

He stands up, and you do too, cutlery clattering. “I’m just trying to understand how things are run here.”

 

“You would understand, if you hadn’t _left_ ,” the words come out of your mouth before you can stop them, and Stiles knows it, too. His eyes widen like you’ve sucker punched him, and you have, and none of this is okay or fair. For a moment he looks like the kid you remember, brazen, bright, and naive. So naive.  Then his face rears back into a hard set of scars and lines, sinking into a facade and anything you recognize disappears behind his own anger. It’s powerful, rolling off in waves.

 

He storms off out the front door, knocking his plate onto the floor when he goes.  Allison puts down her fork and knife and looks at you blatantly. “That was harsh, even for you, Derek,” she says softly.

 

You deflate as Scott looks torn between running after Stiles and staying inside beside his mate. In the end, you excuse yourself and go after him. You don’t want to, because he still smells wrong and he doesn’t smell like Pack or love or family; you can’t hear his heart. Your wolf is telling you that he is foreign, and your heart is telling you this, too. He is not the human boy you knew, on the eve of your two months. He will never be that for you again.

 

This realization is painful. It stings.

 

He’s at the edge of the trees, standing there, hands behind his head. It’s an unusual stance for a wolf - a human pose, one that Stiles often took when he was thinking. You stop, giving him a wide birth. The Autumn sun was setting behind the house, and it’s low rays make his pale skin glow.

 

“You probably wonder why you can smell or hear me, huh? Not like other wolves, not like yours, right?” Stiles asks. He turns around, eyes shining.

 

You don’t say anything, waiting for him to continue.

 

“They wanted to make me invisible to other wolves, so eventually they could use me as a weapon. They electrocuted all my senses until no one could smell anything but burnt blood, Derek.”

 

He throws his hands up, rubbing his face. “Do you want me to go? Is that it? Scott has blubbered all over me twice, Allison’s teaching me to bake a pie, Erica showing me her beautiful garden, Isaac’s hugging me, covering me with his scent - even Boyd has expressed that he’s happy I’m here. That I’m alive,” his voice is killing you, breaking on the last word, “Except you. Everyone is here except you.”

 

“I - I don’t want you to go. It’s just - why did you come here?”

 

Stiles throws his hands up again, “Because where else would I go? I wanted home, I wanted something to make me okay again, maybe, so I started to run, and I kept running. I know I left, okay? I thought about every day when I was underground, I couldn’t - “ He’s hysterical and your heart is racing and the sun is making his eyes glow, positively liquid. “I couldn’t think about anything else but the days I spent here with you and the Pack when they had me. Those memories kept me holding on.”

 

“I’m sorry, Stiles,” you mutter, “I want you to stay.”

 

He stares at you, biting his lip. Then he nods. “Okay. I’ll stay.”

 

Stiles holds himself in his arms for a second like he used to when he was human. Everything about him screams non-human to you, his shoulders still radiate that Alpha power, his scars alone warn you that this is wolf who has survived and will keep surviving. Even his eyes are hard, so unlike the windows of his soul you remember. But in the right light, like just now, he reminds you of that 18 year old boy. He is still there underneath all those layers of abuse and hurt and unimaginable terror. You weren’t sure at first, but maybe there’s hope.

 

-

 

Allison’s and Stiles’ apple pie is delicious, and Stiles apologizes to Allison for disrupting her dinner. He helps Isaac with dishes duty, nudging shoulders and hip checking and acting like Pack almost immediately, humming along to Bruno Mars on the portable that sits on their kitchen shelf. You watch from the kitchen table, enthralled. He doesn’t feel like Pack, this wolf. But he could be, someday, maybe.

 

You shake your heart. _Don’t get ahead of yourself. Don’t hope like that so soon. You’ve had your bones broken once by this boy, when he was merely a human_.

 

Erica rubs your shoulder, smelling like soil. “Thanks,” she murmurs, softly so they won’t pick up on the conversation, “For asking him to stay.”

 

She nuzzles your neck briefly, before following Boyd by the hand into the living room. The Pack soon settles in for a movie, a common activity after a big dinner. The autumn is still cool and the air slightly crisp, smelling like apples and cut grass, a smell you can all appreciate, so you leave a window cracked to left a breeze in.

 

Scott picks Iron Man 3, one you all saw in theaters when it came out a few years before and just bought on sale. In a surprise choice, Isaac sits by your armchair on the floor, weaving a blanket with his hands, supplies spread around him on the rug instead of curling up between Scott and Allison, commandeering their endless affection. You appreciate it, though. You had taught him a few years ago how to weave blankets, like your grandmother had done, an old wolf tradition. He needed something to keep his hands busy, so they’d stop shaking.

 

The blankets he weaves now are beautiful; each one of the Pack has one on their bed, and Scott has one at his apartment with Allison in town. You nudge him quietly as the movie starts up, trailers first.

 

“Who’s this one for?” you whisper.

 

He smiles, bashful, before shrugging, “Stiles, maybe.”

 

He’s tensed, waiting for you to disapprove, but instead you brave a small smile. “He’d like that, I’m sure.”

 

Isaac smiles, hopeful. Stiles is sitting in the other armchair on the other side of the couch, an island all his own. The Pack doesn’t know their alliance yet, doesn’t know how to touch him. He’s starting to smell like them, you notice, but only because he doesn’t have a true scent of his own. He just reeks Alpha, but no linen-lemon familiarity that you still sometimes smell in your dreams.

 

By the time the movie has finished, Allison is sleeping in Scott’s shoulder, hands knotted on top of her swollen stomach, and Erica has drifted to online shopping on her Ipad. Isaac has weaved nearly half of his new blanket, a beautiful amber and gold blend. It’s the first time you’ve thought that maybe the power of Stiles’ unusual eye color is not lost on everyone.

 

“I’ve missed out on so much,” you overhear Stiles telling Scott as they help a half-conscious Allison to the car. “So much pop culture alone.”

 

You know you shouldn’t, but you stand on the porch and lean on the railing, smelling the night and honing in on their conversation in the driveway.

 

“I’m so happy you’re back, Stiles,” Scott sighs, chest rumbling, and they go in for a hug, according to the rustling of clothes and bones.

 

“It’s so different here,” he says, “The Pack is unified and Derek as the Alpha and Beacon HIlls seems almost...normal. And you, and Allison, and the baby...Jesus Christ, Scotty, this is crazy. Crazy good. I’m deliriously happy for you, man.”

 

They embrace again. You can hear Scott’s heart, slow and supple and content. “We want you here, Stiles, and we’ll protect you here, you know that, right?” Scott hushes, hurried and emotional. “You’ve always been my brother.”

 

Stiles’ is calm and centered, so unlike the erratic and spastic manner he used to hold himself when he was human. You can hear him nod, just a dip of his chin once, before he says, “I know.”

 

Scott drives away, and you’re distracted by the crunch of the gravel that you don’t realize Stiles is standing next to you, silent and lithe. It takes a lot of skill, you note uneasily, to sneak up on an Alpha.

 

“You listen in on everyone’s conversations in this Pack, Derek?” he smiles, but his eyes hold little humor, “Or just mine, because you don’t trust me?”

 

“It’s got nothing to do with trust,” you hurry, embarrassed at being caught out.

 

“It’s got everything to do with trust,” he interrupts, crossing his arms. “How can I prove my honesty to you? I came to your property, half-dazed with pain and hunger, and bared my neck to you. I asked for protection. You can hear my heart for any lies when I said I didn’t want to usurp your Pack.”

 

“I - “ you stutter, and of course you do, of course you’re at a loss of what to say to him.

 

He takes a step closer to you, and you realize your mistake when you take a half step back. He narrows his eyes at the moment, not missing a single goddamn thing.

 

“You - are you repulsed by me? Is it the way I look, or the lack of smell - what is it that you hate about me? Do I not make a good wolf to you? It was never my choice, you know. It was never my first choice. Not then, not now.”

 

“You don’t repulse me, Stiles, you  could never - you just. You’re different now,” you offer lamely. You shrug again.

 

“Torture does that to you,” he spits viciously, “as does kidnapping, and psychological torment and slaughtering the first Pack of wolves that took me in -”

 

“Stop,” you interrupt him. “Stop it, Stiles. I’m sorry.”

 

“You say one thing, but your body screams another,” he laments, tapping his nose twice. “I know now, I can tell when you lie, Derek Hale.”

 

“Maybe that would have saved you a lot of trouble before,” you call out as he walks back inside. He turns to you by the door and you offer him a weak smile. A peace offering.

 

“With you, probably,” he says lightly, before bidding a goodnight.

 

-

 

It’s a second night of bad sleep.

 

You rehearse the conversation-slash-argument you and Stiles had out on the front porch in your head over and over again. The way he looked, tired and bedraggled, but not out of place with the white woodwork of the house. His eyes, seemingly permanently bruised underneath, the tissue under his lids damaged. The slope of his long arms and legs, wiry and strong.

 

Not repulsed, you want to correct him. You aren’t repulsed by him.

 

You’re scared of him.

 

-

 

You wake up at the crack of dawn. The sun this morning a blood red, turning the clouds a faint pink. Stiles is looming over you, looking grim and wearing only a pair of running shorts, his thin frame too heavy for his bones to hold up as he slouches over you.

 

“Wake up,” he orders you, like you aren’t the Alpha. You sit up anyway, rubbing your face and moaning as your muscles spasm.

 

“What is it?” you mutter, voice still growly from no use.

 

He grins, mouth like a tripwire, “Let's go running.”

 

-

 

It is exhilarating, running with Stiles. As a wolf, he’s the most magnificent gold, his body taut and quick like whiplash as he taunts you through the woods on your property. He propels off trees, barking and cajoling you, sometimes disappearing altogether before reappearing and snapping at your heels playfully.

 

You growl at him from time to time, trying to scare him into just running, but he’s playful, and you give in almost immediately, howling and snapping, jumping and weaving through trees. The golden in his coat reflects the little drippings of sunlight through the trees, the red morning sky reflected in the giddy shape of his eyes.

 

Soon, you can hear the rest of the Pack rouse and join you. Isaac, your lone brown wolf, and Boyd, gray and fearsome, all come out to play, as well as Erica, a smaller reddish flash of color as she darts in between all of you, nipping at you and cackling.

 

The morning is spent running until everyone is well exercised and exhausted, Boyd and Isaac trailing back into the house to start a late breakfast, Erica disappearing near the creek to rinse off all the dirt in her coat.

 

Stiles somersaults and shifts, lying on the grass in the front yard and you follow suit, stretching out next to him and catching your breath.

 

“It’s nice,” he says finally, and if his shoulder brushes your shoulder you don’t say anything, keeping completely still except for the heave and pull of your lungs as they expand.

 

“The sun?” you guess, and then “The running?”

 

He sighs. “The freedom.”

 

Stiles rolls toward you, nipping at your shoulder, teeth digging in slightly, before getting up and running into the house. The game of tag he instigates lasts for hours, and if you’re nearly thirty and an adult, no one is none the wiser.

 

-

 

The last time you had seen Stiles human he hadn’t seen you. It had been a stupid, human accident, but you had smelt his blood on the pavement from miles away and you hadn’t thought twice; you had ran.

 

The accident was probably mild, except for the limp excuse of a boy with his head bleeding on the steering wheel and a large, open wound on his side from a sizable piece of window glass. The other car, which seemingly had t-boned him, was nowhere to be seen. You can smell the burning rubber only a few miles west, and you tracked the diesel smell, vowing to remember it for later.

 

Scott was only a few minutes away in his own car when you call. Stiles’ head was in your lap, his blood on your hands, not for the first time, but possibly the last, you remember. You can’t forget things. Your wolf won’t let you.

 

The night had seeped on, and Isaac had promised to take the car back to your property. Even though this had no supernatural relation, you were a wolf, and none of the Pack had liked to get the cops involved, not after everything that had gone down in those short few years Stiles and Scott were in school.

 

It was instinct, not need, to hold Stiles’ close to you as Scott sped around cars in the slow lane and through yellow lights. It was instinct, not need, that you licked at some of his wounds to staunch the bleeding. It was instinct. He hadn’t spoken to you since you failed to bite his father and yet here he was, smelling still like Pack. Like he was a part of you.

 

It had been only minutes before you had arrived at the hospital, you remember, that Stiles had opened his eyes and gripped his blood-crusted knuckles into the collar of your t-shirt. His pupils were pin-prick small and the gold iris nearly swallowed them whole.

 

“Take care of my father, will you promise me?” he had begged you, and Scott had looked in the mirror with impossibly worried eyes before you tore your gaze away. Stiles persisted, nearly hysterical. “He needs someone to look after him if I’m not there.”

 

“He’s - okay,” you say, “I’ll look out for him.”

 

“Promise me, promise me you’ll keep an eye on him, don’t let him worry about me.”

 

“Stiles,” you said calmly, pressing your hand against his side wound and absorbing some of his pain. He hissed, falling limp back into your arms as you grunted. “I promise.”

 

Tears had welled in his eyes as he blinked them back, rolling off his cheeks and into your dark denim. “It hurts.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I’m scared.”

 

“Don’t be.”

 

You thought maybe he had recognized you then, but maybe the pain was too much, or he hit his head too hard, because he passed out again before you could say anything else. Your words all at the tip of your tongue, months and months of things you’ve needed to say, like sorry, and please talk to me again and don’t leave me and stay. Stay with me.

 

You never got to say any of those things. Instead, you left Stiles and Scott at the hospital with a promise to look over Stiles’ dead father in your hand and used the natural part of you; the wolf, the predator, to find the group of teenage boys who t-boned Stiles and left him there to die.

 

Ironically enough, they were driving a too-nice camaro almost exactly like yours in red.

 

You made sure to flash your eyes that same red before tearing out their necks. Revenge isn’t sweet, but the smell of their blood underneath your nails sure was.

 

-

 

That evening after dinner you take him out through the mud room and into the backyard.

 

What used to be ash and ruin when he was in school is now an assortment of gardens and projects. When Erica had come back to you, heart and insides nearly shredded by the Alpha Pack, she had taken a long time to heal, her bones mending themselves at a near human pace. Even after, she didn't feel quite comfortable to leave the house that summer; and so she gardened. Food, like basil and mint, lavender for luck; even harvesting her own honey bees.

 

There's a workbench you built her the end of that summer after you realized she was serious about it, that this was something she was passionate about. It was interesting, and possibly too intimate, to watch someone grow into themselves. Erica felt a little too much like family after that, her ear so in tune with your heart, your lungs, your mind. Sometimes you would go out and work beside her, in silence, and it was comfortable. It was okay.

 

"Wow," Stiles says, looking around the garden, peering down at a row of nearly planted cherry tomatoes, now pruned back for the coming winter. "Is this all Erica?"

 

You nod, walking through the brick patio with the overhanging trellis you built two years ago because Allison had always wanted one to drink sweet tea under, and Scott had managed to talk you into it. The Wisteria Erica planted is alive and thriving, beautiful and powerful as it winds around the woodwork, creating a natural floral roof to shade on particularly bright California days. Most of the flowers have fallen now that it's entered October.

 

Through the trees lies the shed. Stiles follows you, loping around like a wolf with long, lanky legs and shoulders slanted to one side, hands shoved deep into his front pockets. He's wearing one of Isaac's plaid shirts, the closest of them to his size, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The white scars on his arms, short and wide, seem pearlescent on his pale fishbelly forearms. They glow in the dark shade of the trees. You try not to stare.

 

You reach the shed in the clearing; it's just a garage for some of Boyd's more adventurous projects and motorcycles. Working as a mechanic means sometimes he takes his craft home with him, tinkering around trying to make beauties out of old scrap metal. Sometimes you come back here for some peace and quiet when the house is boisterous, smelling and sounding of family, and the feeling of it makes the memories come back tenfold. As a wolf, you can't forget, and you can't ignore them.

 

"Is that my -," Stiles stutters as you pull the shed door open and pull the lamp light on. It's not dark, just shaded by the canopy of trees overhead.

 

You nod once, waiting for his reaction.

 

He steps forward like he's unsure how to approach, his hand reaching out to touch the dented, peeling metal of the hood of his first jeep. His arms, you notice, are shaking slightly. There is something lodged in your throat that you can't quite swallow.

 

He whirls around to face you, face unreadable. "After the accident - "

 

"I kept it."

 

"I thought it was stolen by whoever hit me -"

 

"They are in no shape for stealing cars anymore," you grimace.

 

You find yourself frustrated, and a little embarrassed: he doesn't seem to be all that happy you kept this for him. Many a times during his absence, when the wolves were away, you would take Stiles’ jeep out and drive it around the woods, through the backroads and just inhale his smell, remember the rev of the engine when you shifted gears. The steering wheel still reeked of Stiles' blood, but you were used to the coppery tang of him from years before. A human running with wolves meant there were bound to be injuries.

 

Stiles laughs humorlessly. It's unlike him, like his smile was taken from someone else and put on his face incorrectly. "I always knew you had something to do with their disappearance, but Scott swore up and down - "

 

"I handled it as I saw fit. We're wolves. We follow our own laws, and we punish those who hurt us - " or those we love. You don't allow yourself to say the rest.

 

It was a common saying your father used to remind you when you felt unfairly punished in school for defending yourself against those who picked on you or your siblings. He used to palm the back of your neck gently, smelling like the pine trees and old flannel, his glasses on the bridge of his nose. It's hard to be peaceful, son, when it's your wolf's instinct to protect those who hurt you or people you love. _We may seem to follow their rules, but the Moon rules us and we do as she dictates. We are disciplined, not controlled by anger. Listen to the stars first, then your heart._

 

You wonder what he would say to you now.

 

"I don't always feel like a wolf, you know," Stiles says suddenly, like he's confessing something. And maybe he is. Maybe you're not listening hard enough. "People in town can tell I'm something dangerous, feral, even they don't know what it is. Even if I am just the Stilinski boy, I can feel their hearts race on the inside of my skull."

 

You shake your head. You know he's referencing the grocery trip he took with Isaac and Boyd in town the other day. Isaac telling you later that everyone at the Kroger's seemed on edge, uneasy. Most of them had no idea it was Stiles that made them feel that way. Whatever dim radar humans had for danger, you had surmised, Stiles had shown up on it.

 

"There's nothing wrong with being wild, Stiles," you tell him, feeling oddly intimate by reassuring him this.

 

Stiles smiles, and for the first time, maybe, it's genuine, full of teeth and one misplaced dimple. The moles on his face ("Beauty marks, Derek," Erica would purr, "Say it with me") make him look younger. Makes him look seventeen again.

 

"You gonna be wild with me, then?" he laughs, neck reared back so he can howl. You shake your head, unable to stop the smile from creeping up on your mouth. Jesus, this kid. He taps the hood, his fist making a small hand-shaped indent. "Let's ride."

 

You go four wheeling, reckless and raucous through woods on the Hale property. It's doubled in size, since you bought all the neighboring land too, and nearly all the land on the perimeter of town before it crawls into Redwood territory, renting it out to different commercial dairy farmers and fish farmers. Though you don't need an income, it's nice to have one, to have something to do in the office you built yourself.

 

Stiles is pink cheeked and absolutely crazed with adrenaline, mud spraying against the windows and rocks thrown out in the air under the skid of the tires. He's going too fast, even for this kind of activity, spinning the wheel so tightly it nearly breaks underneath his grip as he yells, nearly turning the vehicle on his side more than once. You can tell his heart is racing, not because you can hear it, but because yours is, loudly, blood in your own ears as you hold onto the dash. He's getting irrational, making donuts in the mud and jumping from hill to hill. There are claw markers in the seats just from you trying to hold on.

 

You feel it coming before you know it's coming; that's the thing about instinct and smell. When Stiles was still human, you could smell his bones breaking before they actually did.

 

"Stiles, Stiles, stop - you're going too fast, slow the car down before we flip - " Stiles is still yelling, turning the wheel too sharply in order to avoid the boulder that you're both headed toward - but it's too big to avoid, too narrow a path to swerve around, and you realize with a flash of horror that while Stiles is still yelling, he has let go of the wheel completely.

 

You reach over to grab it, nearly avoiding wrapping you both around a tree and the jeep is airborne before you can prevent it, spinning, blood rushing to your forehead, skin clipping the glass as the window shatters, cutting your skin and imbedding itself. Stiles is still yelling as you fall downwards, losing speed, and it's a large crunch when you land in the mud and rocks below, still upside down.

 

You breath for a second, absolutely silent, before looking over at him in the drivers seat. He's bleeding from his forehead profusely, and before you can help yourself, before you can tell yourself, he's a fucking wolf, he's a fucking wolf, Derek, get a hold of yourself, you're checking for injuries like he's still your human boy. And he isn't. And he'll never be.

 

You pull your fingers away from his skin, his blood underneath your fingernails. Wouldn't be the first time. He looks at you, breathing heavily, and then his face crumples like paper. He takes a gasping, wet, breath, dry heaving and sobbing, and you are covered in his blood despite his wounds being already healed.

 

You listen to him cry. If losing your family in that fire nearly 12 years ago had a sound, it would sound like Stiles crying. It would sound like taking your soul and tearing it piece by piece and lighting it on fire. It would sound like that one unlucky bullet ricocheting into the sheriff's heart.

 

"What am I?!" he screams, beating the steering wheel viciously until it's just a ball of metal. "What _the fuck_ am I?!"

 

Maybe he's screaming at whoever did this to him, took him and bit him; maybe he's screaming at those who tortured him and tried to turn him into a weapon; or the Moon goddess, Selene, who rules over all wolves, who decides their fates for them; maybe he's yelling at you. Maybe, he's yelling at you.

 

You wrap your arms around him as he screams, upside down in a ruined jeep, touching him like you touched him yesterday, or the day before, like it hasn't been years, like he's still that boy with golden eyes, that boy who ran with wolves. Now he is a wolf, one who rivals your own strength, who commands presence, who terrifies even those who have no idea what he is. You always knew he would have made a beautiful wolf, a great one, but you would have never wished it had happened like this; you would have never wanted this for him.

 

It's quiet. Stiles is heaving like there's no fight left in him, slumped in your embrace. "I'm sorry," he whispers hoarsely. "I'm sorry."

 

You hush him. "Don't be."

 

It reminds you of the last time you said that to him six years ago.

 

He turns to you, his eyes red and swollen and wet around the amber of his iris. "Did you ever used to feel this way? When you lost them?" he looks out the windshield, speaking before you can answer. "Sometimes I feel like becoming a wolf took away a part of me that made me, me: the clumsy, breakable human part of me. And then when I was taken underground, I kept thinking...'is this how it feels to lose everything? Is this how he felt?''"

 

"What happened to you doesn't make you less of a wolf, Stiles."

 

He looks at you, "But it does make me a lot less of a person." His mouth is pulled in a firm line, and his eyebrows knit up like he's pleading with you, or himself. "I've killed a lot of people, Derek. I've hurt them. Sometimes I want to hurt myself."

 

"You had to do those things. You wouldn't otherwise - they would have killed you if you didn't do what they wanted you to."

 

"Sometimes I wish I hadn't. I wish they would have just killed me," Stiles shifts, rubbing his face with the butts of his palms. He stares out through the windshield again, like he's seeing things you can't. It's getting dark. "I missed you, you know." he says quietly, and it's like being punched in the gut.

 

-

 

Both of you tip the jeep upright and leave it in the woods; it isn't drivable anymore. Stiles kisses his fingers and then presses them to the hood like he's saying goodbye. Maybe you shouldn't have kept that jeep for him all these years, like he was going to return the same person, waiting to run into your arms. Maybe those kind of human memories are too painful for him, or maybe he barely remembers them at all. You can't imagine which is worse.

 

You walk back together through the woods as humans, on two legs, stumbling along through the brush. The forest is empty. You know it is because the animals that usually inhabit the area are weary of Stiles. They smell a predator.

 

You're lazy, sloppy with the way you walk, your bones aching to shift but you'd rather remain human. Stiles' is much the same, it seems, because your shoulders and his overlap and touch as you walk back to the house. The last two miles, his fingers intertwine with yours, loosely, and neither of you say a word.

 

"Goodnight," you tell him when you reach the top of the stairs. Your bedroom is closest to the landing, his farthest at the end of the long hallway, towards the trees.

 

"When I left, Scott sold my father's house, didn't he?" he asks you suddenly.

 

You nod.

 

"And you kept some of the stuff from my house, didn't you?" he narrows his eyes at you, like he's gauging your reaction, looking for a lie. It occurs to you for the first time that maybe, as Alpha to Alpha, he can't smell out your lies as easily as he can smell out anyone else's. It comforts you, in a way. You spend some much of your time now guessing his every move, feeling inadequate and powerless around him - but perhaps, perhaps you are equals. Two beating hearts. Two Alphas. The same blood.

 

"Why?" it's hard for you not to be difficult.

 

Stiles chuckles under his breath, "I kept smelling my mother everywhere, layers upon layers of high school and my father and everything that house used to represent to me. I thought it was just grief dredged up by being back in Beacon Hills."

 

You grit your teeth.

 

"But then I realized," he drawls, "That you probably have some of my belongings up in your attic, don't you, Hale?" you realize he's teasing, a small smile on his mouth - just a curve upwards. You remember with clarity back when it took next to nothing to make him laugh, even when you were trying to not be funny at all.

 

He doesn't wait for your answer, already heading his direction down the hall. "Show me all the things you kept, won't you? Tomorrow?"

 

"Tomorrow morning."

 

Stiles smiles for the second time tonight, nearly to the door of his bedroom, "I'll be up at the crack of dawn."

 

-

 

Sure enough, his freckled face is peering down at you, startling you awake. You groan, rubbing your eyes and swatting him to get away from you. He ducks, naturally, chuckling as you sit up.

 

"Were you serious?" Stiles asks, and you grumble inwardly.

 

"Serious about what, Stiles?"

 

"About letting me stay here," he clears his throat, seeming unusually anxious, leg jiggling, "Letting me be a part of your Pack."

 

"I said you could stay here," you say shortly, "But you're an Alpha."

 

"So?" he raises an eyebrow, as if to say, what of it?

 

"So," you snap back, pulling a crewneck sweatshirt over your head from out of your dresser. It was one of the few things you had managed to salvage and refinish from the fire; it had been your mother's. It has her initials carved into the the wood on the inside of the first drawer. T-H-A-H. Talia Hale, Alpha Hale. "Alphas usually have their own Packs. Rarely do Packs have two Alphas."

 

"Yet you can have an Alpha Pack," he points out, and you resist the urge to sigh exasperatedly. You have forgotten how quick he is, how easily he can find loopholes and peer inside them. A part of you is irked, but a large, more terrifying part of you is thrilled.

 

"Yes, because when you go against the natural instinct of your wolf and it's nature, when you're so power hungry you're willing to manipulate what it means to be a wolf, to have this - these abilities, you can create things like Alpha Packs. But they are unnatural. They go against what wolves are supposed to be, and so they never last long. Nothing that goes against nature ever does. Nature will destroy it."

 

"Well, so far we've both been able to co-exist," Stiles shrugs, "I don't want any Alpha responsibility, Derek. They are your Pack. But they are my family. They feel like my wolf’s family, too."

 

You wonder to yourself why you have been able to co-exist this well so, and a small whisper deep inside the caverns of your heart tells you it's the beginnings of something you've only seen exist between your mother and your father, the equal balance, equal power, the strongest example of a united front. In the fire, it was shown by the autopsy that your father was the first to perish. You have had terrible thoughts that your mother, the true Alpha (your father by bond), could have escaped the fire that took her life, but instead chose to stay. A bond that strong, one that overpowers your instinct to live and fight, is terrifying to you. You know the Alpha bond is out there, but so far you've done well at avoiding it. There is always too much at stake.

 

You place your hand on his shoulder before you can stop yourself. Stiles look up you from his spot at the end of your unmade bed and smiles slightly. "We can figure it out as we go along, so long as you stay with us."

 

He nods, closing his eyes for a moment.

 

-

 

Up in the attic, Stiles shifts through old boxes of his things from his human days. He looks through things like a wolf does, you notice, whether he does or not; using his nose and sense of smell of examine most of his items, including old clothes, books, and even his posters that used to hang in his room.

 

You hadn't  been sure what to keep, when Scott and Boyd and you had cleaned out Stiles house, his scent fading every day you returned there, long after he had left for the East Coast. You salvaged what you could, and had a estate sale for the rest of the furniture. The money you made is still sitting in an envelope in your office downstairs, along with the money you and Scott made selling the house. You wonder if he'd want it, or if he'd leave it untouched, like you had.

 

"You kept my mother's things," Stiles says, turning around and smiling sadly.

 

You nod and then shrug helplessly, feeling oddly vulnerable.

 

"Thank you," he says honestly, foldering her things back in the box and putting it away into the corner again. He touches her things carefully, fervently, like he's afraid to lose her smell by masking it with his own. You understand that feeling all too well.

 

"My father's, too," he croaks, looking at a box labeled Sheriff. He turns to you again, "I can't express how grateful I am that you kept some of their things for me."

 

"Stiles, it was..." you want to shake it off, you want him to stop looking at you like you've got this breakable, human heart and these breakable, human feelings. You want him to stop looking at you like he can see right through you. But he'll probably never stop doing that.

 

"Don't say it was nothing," he chastises you roughly, "It was a lot. And you know it."

 

You sigh, "You're welcome, then."

 

-

 

October passes like winter is in no hurry to take it’s place. The leaves turn the most magnificent orange and red, and for Halloween, Erica rents every werewolf movie known to man and even though they barely finish Werewolf in London, it’s enough inaccuracy for one night. Stiles is supple and pliant as he follows Boyd up the stairs to his room. He turns last moment, leaning on on the banister and smiling at you.

 

You turn off the tv, Isaac covering Scott and Allison up with the woven blanket you keep on the back of the couch and kissing them both. He passes Stiles on the stairs up to his own room.

 

“What?” you ask, when he doesn’t say anything.

 

He shakes his head, smiling, “Nothing. Happy Halloween.”

 

There’s something more to the way he’s smiling, like the moment you’re having is intimate, private, and he hasn’t invited you to share it with him. It makes you stand up straighter and smile back at him. “Good night, Stiles. Happy Halloween.”

 

-

 

November turns more bitter, but you welcome it. Stiles is an early riser by forced habit when he was underground, but so is Allison, who has a key to the back door and lets herself in often to make breakfast. At twenty-four, she’s already managing three of the six Happy House Tea & Coffee shops in the greater Beacon Hills’ area. The other three, unsurprisingly enough, are run by Erica.

 

They had started off finding abandoned houses in gentrified neighborhoods in Beacon Hills that no one would put money in to fix up to fit in with the now-trendy neighborhood. You had put down the money to invest in all of six of the hand-picked houses as start up’s for the girls (so long as they didn’t name the shops Hale House Tea and Coffee like Erica had once threatened). They fit in nicely with the half-hippy, half-hipster feel of a true Northern California town, nestled halfway between the woods and the ocean. Locals have come to love the coffee and Allison’s hand at baking, and enjoy the three stores that have nurseries attached for Erica to sell fresh flowers and vegetables.

 

It keeps them busy, and the business is profitable now that the local-only trend has blossomed and the number of corner street Starbucks have been reduced. You yourself have only been in one of the Happy House’s once, even though you had funded their endeavor. It had been one of Allison’s, smelling of cinnamon, ground coffee, and Chai, corners filled with plush, dark maroon armchairs and old oak coffee tables. It reminded you, too much, of your mother. The smell. The furniture. The non-hurried way people sat down to drink a cup of java.

 

You’ve never told them this, and they’ve never asked why you haven’t returned. Erica, as a wolf, can sense something amiss, but Allison too, family is every way but blood, who can read the beginnings of your mind. She reminds you of your mother more than she’ll ever know.

 

They cook breakfast together most mornings, Allison and Stiles. You can hear them bustle, whipping up pancakes and muffins and french toast; eggs and bacon on mornings when everyone rises slowly, like molasses, to greet the weekend and spend time together. They drink coffee and tea on the front porch, Allison bundled up, resting her cup on her belly, entering the end of her third trimester.

 

This morning, you rise with them. You can see through the front windows, the sun warm and beckoning you to run, feel the brittle near-winter air on your face and then through your fur as it shines down on you. Stiles is illuminated underneath the morning light. You know if Allison is Artemis, hunter and goddess of motherhood, then Stiles would be her brother, Apollo, owner of all things golden and good.

 

Your thoughts get away from you on mornings like these, make you vulnerable. You shouldn’t think them, not with Stiles so new in your den, not when his smell is still so absent from the mix of all your other wolves.

 

“Morning,” he greets you, smiling, his misplaced, tiny dimple peeking out. Allison smiles too, hair tucked into a long plait.

 

You nod to him, still reserved. Then you tilt your head to the woods just to the west. “Let’s run.”

 

He doesn’t need to be told twice.

 

-

 

Erica has painted her lips Aphrodite red when you drive home that evening. Scott and Isaac are sitting at the table, a game of rummy going between them and half a chocolate cake left, snarking at each other and making nicks in the table top, feet tangled together. Isaac is still in his nursing scrubs.

 

“Is she going somewhere?” you point to her retreating back as she takes the stairs three at a time.

 

Scott shrugs, but Isaac turns around to answer you. “Her and Boyd have a date.” he wiggles his eyebrows, smirking when you swat his neck.

 

He’s not wrong, however, when Erica comes down with her long hair trailing down her back dressed in all black. She looks beautiful, though you usually prefer her covered in dirt with pruning shears in her mouth, growling about roses and aphids. This version of Erica is more vulnerable and tantalizing in this skin. You understand that before being a wolf she had envied this type of human beauty, but you’ve tried to teach her beauty in the land, in using her hands, and being part of a family.

 

She understands, Erica, but some old habits are hard to shake. You know that more than anyone, probably, so you indulge in her high five as she walks out with a well-dressed, somber-as-usual Boyd in her wake.

 

He slams the door before Isaac can finish his wolf whistle. Their card game has finished, and you microwave leftovers from tonight’s dinner as Scott leans back in his chair. “She’s due in two weeks,” he says, a tick in his mouth.

 

You nod, “You going to take her to a hospital?”

 

Scott sighs, “You tell me. Can you tell if the baby is like us?”

 

You don’t want to have this conversation, but it’s needed. You lean against the counter, someone’s copy of Eat, Pray, Love, nudging your elbow from where it sits on top of the microwave. Finally, after swallowing a mouthful of garlic potatoes, you say, “I’m fairly certain that your baby is going to be a wolf, like us.”

 

Scott sighs, and Isaac rubs his shoulder comfortingly. “It’s dangerous to have a baby at home.”

 

“It’s dangerous to have a baby anywhere, anyway,” you say, “but we can help her. Isaac will be there, if that helps you at all,” you add, and Isaac nods. “And if anything goes wrong, we can - “

 

“We’re not going to bite her. That breaks the treaty we’ve made with her father nearly five years ago, Derek,” he says. “Besides, our child, she needs a human mother.” You can see the way Scott nearly turns to Isaac and reassures him, and you too, too.

 

You consider this, “My mother raised four children and most of my cousins during the summer, just fine. Being a wolf makes her instinct as a mother even stronger, to be honest.” You hold a hand up to silence him from speaking and continue, “But that’s her decision.”

 

Scott nods. “She wants a water birth. She says it can be an easier, less painful alternative since she is going to have the baby naturally.”

 

“We can do that,” you agree, “But it’s not going to easy. That baby inside her could be an Alpha, you know. They - he or she, would be born with that kind of power.”

 

Scott’s eyes darken, like you expect them to. He doesn’t verbalize, hasn’t for years - but deep down you know he’d take it all back if he could be human again. Being a wolf is a condition for him, unlike how it is a way of life for you.

 

“I don’t want that kind of responsibility placed on my child,” he grimaces, rubbing a hand through his hair.

 

“They wouldn’t have any responsibility unless I died, and even then, there would be you before your child,” you soothe, “It’s not a bad position to have. Laura was in line to be an Alpha all through childhood, and would have been for most of her adult life, if my mother had not been killed. Anyone can be any Alpha, Scott, by killing one, but not everyone is meant to be an Alpha.”

 

“Like Stiles,” Isaac nods, and you turn to him, surprised. Isaac shrugs, “I can feel it. The power...he doesn’t like it. He wants to reject it all the time, but it hums, just above his skin.” You forget at times of Isaac’s gift of sensitivity, his ability to see things not everyone in your Pack can.

 

“He might not like it if you tell him that,” you inform him, gruffly. Isaac shrugs again, forking out another bite of chocolate cake. Scott thumbs away at the frosting the corner of Isaac’s mouth, intense and thoughtful.

 

You almost cup the back of Scott’s neck, but Isaac is better at comforting him. You two don’t share moments like this often - not like you do with Isaac or Erica or Boyd. “In time,” is all you say. Scott nods, looking farway in thought.

 

-

 

It’s Isaac’s whimpering that wakes you, gut dropping as you swing out of bed down the hall. He hasn’t had a night terror since - jesus, since he was eighteen, but at the time you had become so familiar with waking him up and rolling him over, shushing him. Isaac is one of those wolves who doesn’t need much, but touch, and stability, and love - things he was not given in his human life, are crucial now. He is a true beta; his strength comes with numbers, with Pack, with family.

 

You regret the first two years of his newborn life. You had barely been able to provide a shelter; a broken down train station, an abandoned, leaking loft.

 

Erica and Boyd haven’t returned home, Scott long gone back to Allison in town. Isaac is crumpled at the end of hall, haunches sticking out, metaphorical fur bristled.

 

You kneel to him, pulling him up. His irises are flickering between beta yellow and his natural eye color as he grimaces. “What is it?” you urge him, brushing his sweating hair back from his forehead, “What’s wrong?”

 

The more appropriate question, you think a second too late, is what do you feel?

 

“Not me,” he jerks, and you realize, perking up from the last remnants of sleep, that you’re at the end of the hall, by Stiles’ bedroom door. “Not me, him. It hurts. He’s in pain. It’s hurting.”

 

Isaac chokes, sweating profusely, clutching his abdomen like he’s been gauged. You stand him up by the armpits, pushing towards your room. “Go lie down,” you whisper, and he stumbles towards your bedroom and disappears inside.

 

You push Stiles’ door open, creaking softly. The window is left open, even though it is November, letting a creeping chill into the room. You don’t even get a good glimpse of Stiles, sweating and twitching on the bed, before his elbow is lodged deep into your Adam’s apple, his eyes bleeding red. He snarls, pushing harder, and you feel yourself reel back, shoulders broaden, face shift.

 

He’s terrifying like this, feral and glowing, every criss-crossed white scar up his arms turning a sharp, fierce red, glowing and seething at you.

 

“Stiles,” you growl, teeth bared, “Jesus Christ, _Stiles_.”

 

His name out of your mouth the second time calms him, and he relents, teeth still gleaming, sharp and uneven. You haven’t seen him shifted like this, before, in his half-human beta form. He backs away, heaving, his breath stuttering in his chest like he can’t inhale enough at one time, chest concaving at an alarming rate -

 

You ease him down on the floor, pressing your hand to the back of his neck and into your night shirt to muffle his screaming, snot and tears running ragged against your shoulder, veins throbbing in his temple, neck flushed bright pink. He’s not fighting you - he’s fighting himself, trying to rip apart something inside of him. You’ve never seen a panic attack like this before, his mouth nestled on your bone as he rages at something you can’t see.

 

“I used to,” Stiles heaves shaking, hands trembling as they wipe his face, “I used to watch the light go out of their eyes,” he wipes his nose and his cheek with the back of his hand hurriedly, like the sooner his wet face dries the faster he can forget about all of this - and you know this feeling so well, all too well - “Before I had to kill them, before they were killed, I’d watch all the soul drip out of them. Sometimes, the worse times, when it got so bad, it would get so bad, they’d just give up. They would just lie down and die.”

 

He sniffles again, and then mutters, “I’m sorry..if I hurt you. Or..woke you up.”

 

You shake your head, smile failing you. You feel shaken, on edge, like something inside of you has been disrupted. “I’ll heal. We all do.”

 

Your windpipe already feels fine.

 

“Yeah,” Stiles hiccups, smiling slightly. Just a curve of his lips. He stands up out of your embrace, shaking his bones out like a dog with wet fur and stripping his cotton t shirt off his back. There’s a bulbous knot of scar tissue on his shoulder blade,  along with a purple scar shaped like a small, pointed, rudimentary diadem. You can’t help yourself - your fingers find the tips of it, pressing against the bumpy tissue there. Stiles shivers against you, spine rippling.

 

“What is this one?” you ask, your voice a dull whisper.

 

“Which one? I have a litany of battle keepsakes,” Stiles muses humorously, that sharp, distant edge returning to his voice.

 

“The purple one. It looks - “

 

“It was my Pack’s mark, like your triskele. They were the Crowns’. Ruby and Felix Crown,” Stiles shucks off his Isaac’s borrowed sweatpants, too, standing with his back to you in his underwear, looking outside into the trees. “They became like family to me, they took me in, gave me a place to belong once I was bitten. Ruby... she was already a mom to four other boys. She treated me like she treated them and I...” Stiles’ voice is lost, disappearing into a place you can’t follow him to. You can hear the unaltered, untainted grief, the sound of someone who has lost their family. You know it. You know it more than you know anything else.

 

“I was sad when they were murdered by the Underground. They tried to cut the tattoo out of me,” Stiles goes on, “but you know how our tattoos are, and it never went away truly.”

 

These kinds of tidbits, these little stories of Stiles’ life after he left Beacon Hills (he didn’t just leave you, he left everything. Everyone.) - these little previews into his past, they strangle you. They leave you choking, brain heaving, chest suffocating on all the built up fluid in your lungs. Your wolf feels everything, every scar tingles under the pads of your fingers as you trace along the lost diadem on his back.

 

“Stiles,” you say abruptly, shocked at the sound of your own voice.

 

He turns around, the same height you, long and lanky, chest pale as the moon outside. “Yes?”

 

You falter, “Nothing.”

 

He looks at you like he’s looking through you, the same way he looks out into your woods and sees things you don’t see. He looks at you like he’s terrified the light is going to leave your eyes too, he looks at you like he’s afraid it wouldn’t even matter, because after what he’s seen - you’d just be another death for him to carry around, heavy around his shoulders. He looks at you like he loved you, once upon a time, like he loved anything at all, and your face makes him remember that time when he was seventeen, when he was eighteen, when you were the one laden with grief and darkness and he was your only beam of light. He looks at you like he remembers.

 

He says, “I’m going for a run.”

 

And you don’t say a damn thing.

 

-

 

Isaac is curled up on the far side of the mattress, away from the window and your bedside table. He’s curled up into a ball, spine curving, no trace of the scoliosis he had as a human boy. You settle in next to him, his smell of cold sweat and shampoo draping around like a small comfort. Familiar.

 

He turns to you, “That terror was different from what I’ve felt before. It reminded me of when I lived with my father.”

 

You turn on your side, facing him. “How so?”

 

Isaac blinks owlishly at you, soft-spoken and taking his time to put sentences together. Sleepiness does that to him, softens him even more. He licks his upper lip. “I just felt absolutely no hope. No light. When dad used to lock me in the icebox...and I would try and breathe and end up nearly suffocating, and it felt exactly like that. Like Stiles is suffocating on his own grief.”

 

He shakes his head like he’s confused, like he doesn’t know what to make of his feelings or how to put together his words. “His guilt guts me. I can feel it surround him even when he’s awake. It must cut him in half.”

 

You nod, and Isaac shuffles until he falls back asleep and you suppose you’re thankful that Isaac was here tonight instead of with Scott and Allison at their place. You lie awake until the near prickings of dawn, ears preened for the lonesome howling, from a wolf searching for the moon.

 

-

 

In the morning, you awake suddenly, even though you should be tired. It’s past six, so Isaac has already left for his morning shift at the hospital. You find your sweatshirt at the end of the bed, slide it on and close the door to your bedroom quietly. You can hear Boyd’s rumbling snore and Erica’s tiny flutterings from her room.

 

Sure enough, when you peer inside, they’re curled around each other, Erica wearing lavender flannel pajamas with no surviving lipstick on, their television muted and playing. You close the door, before drifting towards the end of the hall. It’s a long hall, built exactly like the first one you grew up in.

 

Before it had been lined with pictures of wolves, of descendants you can barely pronounce the names of; the First Nation tribe of wolves from up midwest has been on your mother’s side, pictures dated so far back they were a hazy browning color.

 

There had been the school pictures too, of all your sisters and brothers - Laura when she started high school, her hair parted down the middle, Noah playing cello at a outdoor concert when he was fifteen, Cora with her hands deep in a bowl of homemade rice crispy treats. There used to be a picture of your father and his brother, Peter, looking almost like twins, if not for the 10 year age gap. Your father had always worn his hair long, in a small bun at the nap of his neck, his thick beard speckled with bits of gray. You were your mother’s boy, but your father’s man. You had never known what that meant until now.

 

Isaac and Allison had given it their best though, pictures even dating back to when they were all in high school, Isaac in his lacrosse uniform, Allison holding his hand and Scott holding a trophy; a picture of Scott and Allison on their senior prom night, Scott wearing a pair of sunglasses to keep the flash out of his eyes. He still hadn’t managed to control that yet. Erica standing outside of her first Happy House, orchid plant in hand and a huge, pink lipped smile on her face.

 

Boyd with his grandmother before she passed later that year. Stiles, though he was there for the majority of the events captured in the pictures on the walls, is notably absent in all but one picture. He’s standing between Allison and Lydia on their last day of school, bunny ears behind both girls’ heads. You used to press your fingers to the glass, thinking of the way he had looked at you then, how he used to smile. New memories, new family.

 

The room you built for Stiles in mind was the room you used to live in when the house stood originally. It had been your favorite place in the house besides in the kitchen while your mother cooked and watched daytime television on a little portable on top of the fridge. Her favorite had been Martha Stewart Living and All My Children.

 

( _“Is JR finally with Babe now?”_ you would ask when you got home from school, fingers curling around the tall corners of the kitchen island where she always stood, making notes. _“Are you really going to try to make Christmas wreaths this year?_ ”)

 

It’s empty when you peer inside, window shut from last night. He’s barely made an imprint on it, bed covers thrown back, clothes left in a puddle on the floor. You don’t what you’re expecting, really. He didn’t even show up with clothes on his back. Only terror, and scars, and a warning: _there’s a war coming, Derek._

 

You haven’t seen a war yet, haven’t smelt anything in the air. He had been half-delirious when he had said it. He had looked like he had seen a war, and lived, but only barely.

 

You drinking yesterday’s coffee when Allison lets herself in through the side door,  slipping her rain boots off in the mudroom entry and stepping into a pair of slippers sitting against the wall.

 

“Good morning,” she bustles in, heaving a grocery bag on the kitchen block. She brushes wisps of her hair out of her face and mouth. “You look exhausted, Derek. Long night?”

 

Allison turns the radio on as she dumps a five or six peaches into the sink and turning the water on.

 

“I’m fine,” you grunt over your cup of coffee, sounding more drained than you’d like to. She looks over her shoulder and grins at you knowingly, seeing through your complete bullshit, before leaning over the sink to attend to her fruit. Her belly, swollen and nearing the end of her third trimester, as Scott reminds you daily now, a twinge of nervousness on his tongue, provides a challenge for her to reach into the sink.

 

“It’s November,” you say, just to change the subject off you and your many unhealthy habits, “Those can’t be in season.”

 

“They aren’t,” Allison says as she dries them with a dish towel, “I froze them over the summer and now I’m going to make peach oatmeal and a pie with them.”

 

“What’s in the bag?” you ask, nodding to the grocery bag on the counter, brimming with store-bought bouquets.

 

“Flowers. It would have been my mother’s birthday today,” Allison sighs, and you cringe inwardly, “And I bought some for Stiles too, if he wanted to come with me to the cemetery. Speaking of,” she looks around the empty kitchen, “He’s usually up and ready to cook with me.”

 

“He’s out, running,” you say awkwardly, and Allison hums to herself, smiling. She always looks at you so kindly it’s nearly like she’s laughing at you. It makes you forget, since she’s been pregnant, that she’s no girl to take lightly. The sight of her with a bow and arrow in arm, still after six years of treaty, makes your blood run a little cold.

 

“Oh, is he? Well, then you’ll just have to help me,” she laughs when you inevitably make a face. You know how to cook a good piece of meat, and yellow birthday cake, and that’s it. She pulls you to the sink and directs you to a cutting board and several peaches.

 

You put your coffee down, which is exactly the moment Allison picks it up and smells it. “What is this swill your drinking, Derek? God, you’d think you’d know how to brew a new pot!” she chastises, throwing your coffee down the sink drain and going to pull the bag of Italian brew Happy House is using at the moment.

 

“It was fine,” you say stiffly, but it’s a moot point. It’s always a moot point.

 

-

 

Your hands still smell like peaches and you can feel the sugar between the rivets of your fingers, just barely there but still there enough to make it count, to make you rub the pads of your fingers against one another. It's after dinner and you're still on the front porch, light on. The breeze doesn't chill you, not really, but it makes you sit taller, more alert.

 

Stiles come into the clearing of the trees to the left of you, and a part of you wonders if he made himself obvious on purpose because he knew you were there, or because he is tired. He's been running for nearly a whole night and day. You wonder if he ran to the ocean, or the Redwoods, or Oregon or Idaho - you know somewhere wet, damp, full of woods and tall trees. Wolves don't particularly like too much desert, too much heat. You can picture Stiles, wolfed out, running so fast his fur blurred against the stark greenness of the foliage around him. Fierce, frightening, but full of fear.

 

He looks exhausted as he walks slowly to you, and you look away, gritting your teeth together as you toss his a pair of shorts for him to slide on. You know he probably can hear the enamel in your mouth scrape together.

 

"Thanks," he mumbles, voice hoarse. He comes over and plops down next to you, smelling - not like Stiles you remember, but like soil and earth and you inhale as quietly as you can. You both sit for a moment looking outside into the dark. You can't see any of the stars above because of the heavy clouds. Usually parts of the Orion constellation is visible, and you always trace the outline. It's Scott's favorite, and that makes sense, you think, in the grand scheme of things.

 

"I'm," Stiles says, his voice dying out. He clears his throat, forearms resting on his thighs and his hands knotting together over and over. You notice his thumb rubs over a small scar on the back of his hand - a tiny knick in the grand comparison to the rest of his body, but it seems significant. It seems to hold a lot, the way he's coveting it. Finally, Stiles takes a deep breath, steeling himself. "I'm struggling."

 

You can feel his shame, and for a moment you startle yourself. You've never been able to feel much radiate from Stiles, never so much as a spark, except for his nightmare - and that was mostly Isaac being a Sensitive in the first place.

 

"None of us expect you to come back from what you went through and be completely okay. Not even close," you say finally, trying to choose your words carefully and also trying to not sound like you were doing just that. You close your eyes for a moment, lids heavy.

 

"I told them at dinner tonight. Everything you told me about what happened to you Underground."

 

Stiles look at you, his face open and vulnerable, eyebrows drawn up. "Thank you," he says sincerely, "I appreciate you didn't do it while I was there. I don't know if..."

 

"When I lost my entire family, all I knew how to do was run. It was the only thing that gave me a sense of peace. The guilt stopped. The terror stopped. I just. Was."

 

Stiles nods, "Exactly. I can just..breathe."

 

"S'hard, isn't it," You duck your head for a moment. "Breathing."

 

Stiles nods, a half-spoken, half whispered, "Yeah," following it its wake.

 

You stand up, brushing off your jeans, even though they're covered in both flour from this morning and remnants of soil from Erica's greenhouse.

 

"Derek," Stiles says, stopping you from entering inside your home. You turn around. He's looking at you like he used - half-hopeful, and half-reluctant, and you've never been so ready to see that expression again. "I never got to tell you how impressed I am. Your Pack - it's a family. Compared to what it was when I left. And the treaty with the Argents, and Scott joining...you've become so much."

 

The wolf in you flushes at such a compliment, preening from any sense of appreciation or pride that Stiles is showing you, and the human part of you too feels strangely sated and warm. He smiles up at you, small, before sinking back into his bent position on the porch step.

 

Finally, after the quiet has settled again and Stiles is waiting for you to speak for nearly a minute, you say, "Run as much as you need.”

 

_But please come back. Come back to us. Come back to me._

 

-

 

Warm and sated, you wake up with a gut-wrenching start as someone sneaks into your bedroom. Your eyes flash red immediately before a hand lands on your chest, keeping you still.

 

"It's just me," Stiles whispers, and you can hint out cold sweat and laundry soap Isaac uses. Stiles flashes his eyes once before bending down to your ear. "Is it - okay? Is this okay?"

 

You want to ask, what Stiles, is what okay? But you're half-asleep and too alert at the same time and both feelings negate each other once your wolf realises its not a life or death threat. You don't get the chance to even clear your throat before Stiles crawls in next to you, his sweat-and-soap smell oddly comforting and different enough that you turn your nose up towards the ceiling to get a better take, even though he's behind you.

 

He's not emitting warmth that you're expecting from when Isaac used to crawl up with you, and in fact, he seems to make no inclination to touch you at all, and you frown to yourself, rolling around to face him and find Stiles in an almost inhuman position, curled so tightly his spine looked like a brittle comma.

 

You inhale again, sighing on the exhale, before shuffling closer and pulling the quilt around Stiles’ and your's shoulders. It smells musty and a little old, but only because you refuse to wash it. It was your mother's. You're sure if anyone would understand about the blanket, it would be Stiles.

 

"Bad dreams?" you murmur quietly, eyes drooping closed.

 

Stiles shakes his head, hands covering part of his temple and ear. He's like nothing you've ever seen; he can't hide the power, the presence, the pure blood Alpha he emits, even when he's tucked his knees to his chest, even when he's severely underweight and riddled with human-looking scars.

 

Stiles, the golden-eyed, Apollo-like, half-darkness, half-son-of-Sun, the puny boy who ran with wolves, and then became an Alpha on accident. Suddenly, you aren't the only tragic story around. You want to reach out to him, to touch him, to make him warm; so you do.

 

He's just as cold as you thought. You touch him first at his elbow, your warm palm sliding up his bicep and to his shoulder, pulling his hand away from his face and holding it to your chest. You can see the black seep into your veins even in the dark as you suck out some of his pain; you expect it to make your spine hurt, or your muscles ache, like it usually does when you do this, but with him it feels like a bruise to the heart.

 

He whimpers, eyes pressed tightly closed, before the tension draws out of him like his blood is being drawn. He blinks slowly, his amber irises like two identical blood moons. "You've gone soft, Hale."

 

You nudge him closer to you without saying anything - you don't want to tell him he's right, he's absolutely right; that you have gone soft, that you are strong and not fragile and not weak. You have a Pack and are finally good to them, that you have finally begun to bury the many bones in your closet; that you are grown now, not lost, not scared. You are not always so angry, or so sad, even when you wake up some mornings and feel like it's probably best if you just walked into oncoming traffic - you want to tell him, losing you affected me. It affected all of us. You want to tell him, _I'm sorry I was so scared of a human boy, and his inhuman love. I'm sorry you reached out and I pulled away._

 

But you're still Derek Hale, soft or not, and you're still so confined by what others think of you, even Stiles, who thinks so many things at once he used to never sit still, reeling with thought and ideas and words; you don't say anything.

 

You hold his hands to your chest, and you wait for him to fall asleep before you drift off too.

 

-

 

The Pack reacts in different ways. You stand back, watching. Scott, who wears the weight of the world on his shoulders, takes Stiles out for a drive into town. They don't reappear on the Hale property for a long time, and when they do, it's past dinner time. Allison has immersed herself with paperwork for the shop on the table, Erica clicking figures into a computer spreadsheet. Scott has misty eyes and there are wrinkles in Stiles' face from smiling. The ghost of a grin.

 

You remember when - before his senior year of high school, when Stiles smiled all the time. Sometimes cajoling, other times smug, and sometimes so blissfully happy it gave away how utterly human he had been. He used to feel things openly. Now its harder, but you of all people, you know just how hard it is.

 

Isaac is more predictable. He smothers Stiles in his scent, giving him clothes to wear that have already been worn, leaning against him when cooking in the kitchen, curling up next to him on the sofa. Isaac was never taught true affection as a human and so he overcompensates now. It took some while to get used to, when he first turned, and you fucked it up a lot - one of your worst moments reverting to violence in an effort to scare him away, but Isaac is loyal, and he is good.  You think Stiles appreciates the affection more than he's able to let on. Isaac has that way about him.

 

Boyd shows him the vintage motorcycles he's working on, and even lets Stiles tinker around his shop. From what you can tell he doesn't bring it up, and he doesn't pressure Stiles to bring it up, either. He is the unwavering hand. Erica is softer. Sometimes she gets this glazed over look in her eyes when she's looking at him and you'll watch as Stiles reaches over and places his mangled hand on top of her's, like he's comforting her. Perhaps they share more history than you know of. It's always unnerving to think that there are pieces of Stiles' human life you didn't know about.

 

Allison treats him much the same. Graceful, elegant, commanding Allison. She's trying to teach Stiles to cook, with some meals better than others. It makes sense to you, her demeanor. Where Scott is soft, and Isaac vulnerable, she is made of bone and steel. That's how soulmates work.

 

And you, and you.

 

Sometimes you wake in a cold sweat with nightmares of Stiles' being tortured, of his scars being inflicted over and over and not healing, of him giving up. You picture a dingy cell and feel the claustrophobia constrict in your heart. You think of winter for two years and feel the shiver run down your spine. You've known terror, haven't you? Hasn't it made you hard in ways you didn't know you could be? Hasn't it made you foolish and rash when you were young, when you didn't know how to handle all the guilt in your head? It's different with Stiles. He's always been innocent - not always naive - but innocent, a beacon, a sense of right. You don't let yourself mourn the loss of that Stiles; it isn't fair, and it's selfish. Sometimes he looks over to you, not saying a word (and that in itself is still disconcerting) and he seems to know exactly.

 

_I miss that person too, but there's nothing we can do._

 

You wake up one morning to find Erica and Stiles outside in the back garden, moving a tiny tree into a dug out hole. It's November, and probably against Erica's best advice, but the symbolism dawns on you. Regrowth.

 

-

 

A combination of Allison, Isaac and Stiles put on Thanksgiving this year. Boyd, dressed not in coveralls or oil stained t-shirts for once, looks like a striking Adonis figure in tan slacks and a pressed shirt. You both bicker and mumble over how to stack the firewood properly in the burning wood stove that he just installed this summer, though ultimately Boyd knows what he’s doing, and you’re only fidgeting because of Thanksgiving. The idea of Official Family Gatherings are something you both crave and something that nauseates you. And after all,  you were an American history major. You're too cynical to really feel any joy in celebrating this holiday.

 

The whole house is warm and makes you less alert, more likely to crack a smile, especially when Isaac all too eagerly shoves his hand up inside the turkey and nearly tears it clean in half. Allison kisses his forehead placatingly as Stiles nearly collapses in half with laughter, and she ultimately relegates him to the steaming of asparagus after that and he obeys, though somewhat glumly.

 

Allison is placed at one end of the table, her swollen belly peering up over her plate, and you at the other end. Boyd says grace and you grasp Erica’s hand and Isaac’s hand on either side of you. You haven’t believed in a God for a long time, and Boyd knows this, but all the same, you bow your head and pray. You know if he can accept your Selene, you must accept his Jesus.

 

Half way through the meal, stomach already full but seconds still coming, Scott’s in midstory, Erica bright red from laughter and Isaac unable to control his snorting when you look over down the table at Stiles. He’s smiling, watching the story unfold when he catches your eye.

 

 _Look_ , you want to say, _there is a way to be good again_.

 

Stile seems to understand, because when everyone dissolves into good-natured laughing, he raises his glass and toasts, never wavering his gaze from your’s, “To new beginnings.”

 

“To friends,” Erica supplies, downing the rest of red wine and burping, another peal of disgusted laughter escaping Isaac.

 

Scott’s smile is too warm and too gentle, like he’s so happy he might break in half. “To family,” he says finally, and you all toast.

 

-

 

That night, when everyone full and sleepy, Isaac pulls on Allison’s hand as she makes her way out, his face screwed up concentration. “Stay here tonight.”

 

“Isaac,” she says, startled “What – ”

 

“I just feel,” he begins, unable to illustrate exactly what he feels, but his hands come up to cup her belly. “I just feel like it’d be safer for you to be here tonight, with us. Scott too.”

 

She softens, taking his hands and holding them. Stiles has his forearms buried in soapy dishwater, and you’re supposed to be drying, dish towel in hand, but you’re distracted by their interaction by the backdoor.

 

“I’ll be fine, I think Scott wants to go back – ” she says gently, smiling and brushing his hair away from his forehead.

 

Isaac shakes his head. He turns to Scott, “I can’t explain it – but you should. You need. Stay here, where I can help if something –”

 

Scott looks between the both of them solemnly before nodding twice. “We’ll stay. We haven’t in a while, I suppose it can’t hurt. Help me put her things in the back bedroom.”

 

Stiles looks confused when you turn around, sponge still on his dish. “What the hell was that all about?”

 

You look back at Allison’s and Isaac’s retreating forms into the bedroom back behind the dining room, hands intertwined, and shrug.

 

“Isaac is Sensitive,” you explain instead. “He can feel things or people, like a gut feeling. Tells me it occurs like we’d experience deja vu, except it hasn’t happened yet, or it’s happening to someone else and he’s just – ‘listening in.’”

 

Stiles takes this in. “I knew a wolf like that. She – she could feel when things were about to happen. Useful, you know, but also terrible. Sometimes she’d just look at one of us a certain way and they’d know that this was their last day.”

 

All the food in your stomach churns uneasily, “Did you ever...”

 

Stiles looks at you pointedly, waiting. There’s a tiny white scar that cuts into his top lip. You wonder distantly if it would be smooth or bumpy if you were to touch it.

 

“Did you ever have Thanksgiving with your other Pack? The Crown’s?” you ask finally, and Stiles looks relieved to be asked that question. His eyes light up as he attacks the stuffing bowl with his sponge.

 

“I did. Ruby made these amazing twiced baked potatoes, and she’d always make three dozen because the boys and I would be aching for more a week in December, they’d be that good. Felix would cut the turkey, of course, and we’d eat around the television, watching Charlie Brown,” he smiles to himself. “Sounds like some cheesy Norman Rockwell painting, doesn’t it?”

 

“No, Stiles,” you shake your head, “It sounds like they really cared for you.”

 

“They did,” Stiles says, nodding somberly to himself, “They were a good Pack. Kept my mind off me being alone. It was especially terrible losing them.”

 

“I’m sorry,” you say, and it feels like you say that a lot to him.

 

He smiles at you, accepting your apology. “This is has been by far one of the best Thanksgivings to date. Thanks...for everything. You didn’t have to let me into your home.”

 

You shake your head, “I did. I did have to. We all wanted you. It was strange at first, to have another Alpha in the house. But we need you here.”

 

Everything you’re saying is true. You can feel the offsetting pull your gut makes in warning every time it forgets there is another Alpha in the house, but you can feel Stiles’ wolf in submission to you, accepting your order and your rule.

 

But more than that, you can feel Stiles’ love and tentativeness, his need for Pack and protection and family. Wolves doesn’t do well isolated, and they don’t do well alone, and those are both apparent in Stiles. You used to think he was just starved from not being fed, but his kind of starved is of another variety, and it means something more.

 

“Such a sap,” he says, but you know he’s saying, thank you. Thank you.

 

Stiles elbows you, smiling goofily, the scar on the droopy side of his face crinkling and disfiguring him for a moment. You whip him with the towel you’re supposed to be using to dry dishes, and he laughs, darting out of the way, and he laughs again when you miss a second time. For some reason, you have never heard anything more attractive.

 

-

 

You expect Stiles to follow you in your bedroom later that night. You’re not sure why, you realize, as you brush your teeth in the tiny bathroom off your room, slipping into a pair of pajamas for decorum’s sake. You will not actually get cold, but flannel feels nice against your skin.

 

A voice in your head chastises you right away. Don’t get your hopes up.

 

But, you argue, trying to rationalise, he’s come in your room twice now. To sleep. And touch. And it was nice, you say to yourself, for both parties. It still stirs that edge of want; a dredged up feeling you wished you could forget - but Stiles doesn’t know this - so on the surface, it was nice. It had been a good night tonight, the voice says in your head. Thanksgiving was good. There’s no reason he won’t come tonight. Be patient.

 

There wasn’t the gaping hole at the table where Stiles was supposed to be like the past years - even though he isn’t the same Stiles, he’s a version of him, and you think everyone in the pack will take what they can get.

 

You crawl into bed and turn out your light at half past twelve. The crescent moon is outside your window, where it illuminates the front lawn and the trees surrounding the front side of the Hale property. Boyd had teased you when you picked this room - as it was by no means the master bedroom, nor the nicest - because it was, as he had said, “The lookout post.”

 

Well, you hadn’t had any defense for that. Boyd was better at seeing straight through you than you normally gave him credit for.

 

You feel the pack settle. Despite Isaac’s protest that Allison and Scott stay at the house tonight, he still trudges up to his own room and crawls underneath his own blankets. He likes his space in the evenings. You have always understood that. Boyd is down in the den, napping on the couch, Conan on low, the television emitting white noise. Erica is in her room, already asleep. You can hear Scott and Allison’s matching heartbeats downstairs, both set at a resting pace.

 

You can’t sense Stiles, not like you can your pack - they are like heartbeats inside your head, heat images appearing in front of your vision every time you blink. You’ve gotten much better at tuning it out when you need to - it’s much less overwhelming that it used to be, having all these wolves to carry around with you. It’s not so much a burden anymore, like it was when you were twenty three and still angry and stupid and grieving. It’s more like an extremely warm blanket keeping you safe, and dare you say, content. Safety, pack, family.

 

You can still sense the Alpha noise Stiles helplessly emits - you’re sure that the entire pack does; Allison, too, maybe, if the humans at the grocery store had gut reactions when he came across their paths. You feel a pang of pity for him. You remember what it was like to be a complete pariah.

 

He has the pack, though. Scott is constantly babbling in Stiles ear about this and that to fill the silences. Allison is waiting for him every morning with a smile on her face. Isaac is a physical constant, reminding Stiles - hi, I’m here, I’m here for you - Boyd and Erica have accepted him like six years haven’t passed. Teaching him how to be a wolf in the day to day. Teaching him how to live, not just survive. Look, Stiles, they say, you can come back from this.

 

You realize now, in your half-dazed sleepy stupor, that the look Erica often shares with Stiles is understanding. She too, has come back from death; of torture and capture at the hands of the Alpha Pack. She had been just sixteen, then.

 

“Stop thinking so loudly,” Stiles says from the doorway. You startle; you hadn’t even heard him come in. He grins, white teeth gleaming in the dark of your room.

 

“Don’t sneak up on people,” you grumble, but you roll over and flip your blankets as way of invitation. He shuffles over, and you notice his sweatpants sag on his skinny hips but are too short in the ankle. You should probably bully him into getting some clothes. Maybe Erica will help.

 

“Sorry, Alpha,” he snarks, crawling in and pressing his feet to your calves. You frown, his feet are freezing. It’s not - it’s not normal for wolves to be this cold. Generally, you all run hot. He settles a moment later, letting out a very human shiver as he curls the blankets around his neck.

 

He looks at you in the dark. “Hi,” he says quietly.

 

He sounds like he did when he was seventeen. Or eighteen, with his bleeding head in your lap as Scott drove to the hospital and you promised to look after the Sheriff. That memory guts you. Something about human Stiles is now too precious and too painful to think about without proper precaution.

 

“Hey,” you say slowly, your voice deep and gravelly. You reach over, run your warm hand down his cold arm and then placing it over his heart, your wrist just skimming his nipple. You start to grasp onto some of his pain. It feels like the other two times you’ve done this; like a bruise directly over your heart. It is a pain that aches deep from within.

 

Stiles sighs, eyes falling closed for a moment. His eyelashes flutter when he opens them again. Your other hand has moved to touch the scar above his lip. Your inquiry about whether or not is a bumpy scar or not has been solved; it’s impeccably smooth. Stiles’ hot breath comes out onto your fingers, and he’s nearly crossed eyed watching your fingers move over his smooth upper lip.

 

He smiles around your fingers, and you bring your hand back. “When you look at me like that, it’s hard to believe I’m ugly,” he says, a hint of teasing in his voice.

 

“Stiles,” you protest, your face screwing up, “You’re not - “

 

“I’m aware,” he says steadily. “Of what I look like. Now, and before,” he sighs, but he doesn’t seem bothered by this reality. His seventeen year old self, you remember, was distinctly self conscious.

 

“Six months into being Underground, they dragged me into this room. It was not like the fighting areas, which were in these like, emptied enclosed aqueducts - but a lab. I was really weak, at the time,” Stiles’ brow furrows as he tries to remember, and you want to say, you don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to.

 

But maybe he does. And so you don’t move a muscle, and you listen.

 

“They kept me and this other wolf - Mia - in this cage the week previously, chained up, kept cutting us open, and we kept - healing, obviously. They were curious. Wanted to know, why, you know, how,” he swallows, “but anyway. I was brought into this lab, and I was covered in blood but had no wounds, and they strapped me to this table. I remember pleading, ‘you don’t - you don’t have to do this. I’ll behave.’ Such a waste, because they didn’t care - I wasn’t a person, to them. This one woman came over,” he said, and he shudders.

 

You reach over and cup his neck gently, not like you would a cub but - reassurance. You don’t think about it, or second guess yourself; it feels like right, like Stiles’ body was calling to you.

 

“Haddie was terrifying. She was one of the head scientists - if you could call them that,” he continues. “and she took this hammer and she had these two other guys break all my bones and my joints, and then when they were all shattered, she injected me with this syringe full of - I don’t know - something, lead, or metal concoction. And when they healed, the metal healed with the bones, infused with it. It’s nearly impossible to break them now. I’ve tried,” he says bitterly. “I realized then what they were really doing - figuring out how to make us weapons. That’s all we were.”

 

You shake your head against your pillow, running your wrist over the damp spot on Stiles’ pillow. “You’re not a weapon.”

 

“I know,” Stiles chokes, hurried, “I _know_ that. I’m not. When - after they did that, I healed differently. You couldn’t  break my bones, but my skin wouldn’t heal either. I scarred like a human, I bled like one. So a year and a half of that... and my body looks like this.”

 

“Sorry doesn’t make it better,” you state calmly, but your gut turns for him. You feel wretchedly guilty for things you couldn’t control. You wish you were there to protect him. You wish, distantly, you had gotten up the courage to ask Stiles to stay six years ago. “Anger won’t change anything.”

 

Stiles nods, and he oddly looks grateful that you say that more than any bumbling apologies. He shuffles closer, close enough that you can see his long, wet eyelashes. “You’ve grown up a lot,” he says, and you shrug.

 

“I had to,” you admit, because it’s Stiles, and he’s always been able to drag this shit out of you, these confessions. “I have a pack. I have people who need me.”

 

“They are happy. I can smell it. Not just the house, but the land, the earth. It’s at peace,” Stiles says, “I am proud of you.”

 

You are oddly touched. “Go to sleep, Stiles,” you say gruffly instead, and it’s such a familiar statement that Stiles smiles, and closes his eyes.

 

-

 

You dream. You dream of Stiles when he was seventeen and had kissed you for the very first time, his mouth blood red and his cheeks flushed from the December cold emitting through his open bedroom window. You had kissed back and then felt that ever familiar guilt a moment later. You were so damaged, then. So dark.

 

“I want you,” Stiles had blurted, human body young and fragile in his pajamas.

 

“No,” you had barked, harshly, backing away towards his window. You were looking for an escape. You couldn’t deal with this human boy and his hormones and the smell of his body, wanting, wanting you.

 

“Stay,” Stiles had said, scrambling out of his twin bed and rushing to you. His hands clasped around your wrist, imprint barely registering except that his hands were warm, and your’s were still bitten by the cold outside.

 

“You can’t go back to the train depot. It’s wet there. Boyd and Erica are at Boyd’s grandmother’s, and Isaac is with Scott. You’d be alone. In a cold, wet, nasty, train depot.”

 

“Stiles,” you had gritted your teeth, glaring at him, but he went on, unbothered. He tugged on your wrist towards his bed, and weak little you had followed.

 

“Just for the night. I won’t do anything. Just sleep. You’re tired,” Stiles had reminded him, and you were tired, you had been exhausted and doing everything entirely wrong. He pushed your jacket off your shoulders, undid your belt for you. Stiles had watched with owlish amber eyes as you had slipped your wet jeans off and slide in next to him.

 

“Night, Derek,” he had whispered, and you hadn’t responded. You were afraid that thank you would have slipped out instead of shut up, Stiles. And you couldn’t have that.

 

-

 

You wake suddenly when it’s still dark out, Stiles sitting up and erect next to you. It feels like four am, like just the edges of morning in the air.

 

“Something’s wrong,” he says, confused and sleepy-riddled, “I smell blood and..amniotic fluid.”

 

You spring to your feet, Stiles right at your heel as you bound down the staircase, “Allison,” you say as way of explaining, but Stiles probably already knows. Isaac is downstairs, outside their bedroom in the back of the house and holding up a very limp looking Allison. Her belly is exposed, and the skin there looks stretched, red, and angry. Her feet are uneven and she can’t seem to get even footing. You can tell she’s putting nearly all her weight on Isaac.

 

“The baby,” Isaac says to you, eyes flickering yellow, “is coming. Scott is filling up the tub.”

 

Allison cries out in pain, hands cradling her midsection. She tries to hunch over but is unable to, of course, and seems to make her pain worse. “Isaac,” she pants, “Isaac, the contractions are happening too close together. I should have hours - hours before - “

 

“You don’t, though. And you’re burning up,” he says gently, wiping away at the pearls of sweat gathering at her brow. Erica is in the kitchen, soaking towels in hot water in the sink. She is wearing dark stretchy pants and a tank top and her hair is pulled back against her skull. She looks oddly like a soldier.

 

“This is gonna get messy,” she says, sterilising more towels. You grit your teeth at the sight of the medical tools on the kitchen counter.

 

“Shit,” you hear Stiles say, and you look over back into the hallway to find that Allison’s legs have completely given out, and there’s blood running down the inside of her knee.

 

Shit, indeed.

 

Your stomach turns. You think of your mother when she was pregnant with Cora. You think of your mother when she was pregnant with Charlie. Stiles is holding on to her other side, trying to support her, but she’s writhing around in pain, and you can tell both Isaac and him are trying to be careful, trying not to grip her too hard.

 

“The baby is coming,” she screeches, panic written across her face, “we don’t have time for a bath. Scott - Scott - ” she calls for him, and he finds her a second later, “There isn’t time. The baby is coming.”

 

He nods solemnly as he rushes into the room, forearms wet. He looks rightly terrified but determined. They both look so incredibly young.

 

Erica moves Happy House files off the dining room table, laying a towel down. “Guess we’re doing it the old fashion way, then.”

 

Boyd, the most burly of you all, makes a move to pick her up - it isn’t easy, trying to be gentle but also making sure she doesn’t fail out of his grip will she twitches with contractions. He sits her down gently on the table, holding her head up for a moment while Erica sticks a pillow underneath her neck for support. Her hands grasp the air for purchase, for someone and Scott immediately takes her hand, pushing her hair out of her eyes. Stiles, surprising you, grabs her other hand.

 

“You’re going to be fine,” Scott reassures her, but his voice tremors. He looks to you for a moment where you’re standing next to Isaac. You can only nod. Her heart, for now, is still beating wild and strong. “The baby is coming, Al. We’re finally going to meet them.”

 

She nods hurriedly, face screwed up in pain. Isaac tugs her shorts and underwear off with surgical determination, and bends her legs at the knee. He stands up a moment later from between her legs, a horror evident on his face.

 

“From what I can tell, the baby is facing the wrong way,” he says, “I’m not - I don’t usually help deliver babies, let alone - let alone ectopic babies,” he says, voice raising octave. His eyes flicker again, panic set in his features. “What if I -”

 

“Isaac,” Erica says sternly, bringing a steaming towel to wipe down the blood covering Allison’s leg, “This isn’t time for second guessing or panic. She’s counting on you. The baby is counting on you.”

 

Allison gasps, eyes rolling back, and you look to see Stiles, pale as a sheet and blanched, still except for the black lines of pain seeping up his arm as he holds her hand - it makes the scars in that arm glow red, faintly, like they’re coming alive.

 

“Too much, Stiles,” you say, but you don’t touch him or make a move to interrupt him, “You’re taking too much at a time - you’re going to exhaust yourself.”

 

Stiles shakes his head, mouth drawn in a firm line and eyes squeezing closed in concentration.

 

The moment is too fragile. Any one thing could go wrong. Allison’s heart is beating too fast, fluttering ferally, and Stiles takes a deep breath, slumping, eyes flickering Alpha red for a moment. She starts to scream, and Scott tries to soak up as much as her pain he can grasp, face flickering in utter agony.

 

“Okay, Al,” Isaac says, and you blanch when you see that his hands and wrists are covered in her blood already. He’s crouched at the end of the table between her legs. “Okay, we’re going to have start pushing okay, you have to push.”

 

Allison nods, biting her lips, tears slipping out of the corners of her eyes and mingling with droplets of sweat. You hold, upon Isaac’s instruction, just under knee, and Boyd holds the other for support. She sits up on her elbows, eyes closed and face flushed and sweaty, Erica unable to wipe her down quick enough.

 

“Okay,” Isaac says, eyes locking onto her’s, and you can feel it, the love, the worry, the anguish of waiting even a split second, “Push.”

 

Everything seems to go quiet in your head and you watch the scene, detached. Allison half naked on the table, pushing as hard as she can and then crying out in exertion and frustration, Scott a constant stream of encouragement and reassurance, fear written all over his face. Stiles is sucking out her pain again, looking strung out and determined, as Erica shouts Keep going, Allison, you can do this, we’re here, wiping her face with a damp towel. Boyd looks over to you, blinking slowly. He nods once like he knows exactly what you’re experiencing.

 

There’s a split second, where Allison stops screaming, and Scott isn’t talking, and Isaac and Erica have quieted, and everything is utterly silent, when -

 

“She’s here,” Isaac says, holding a tiny being in his arms, covered in blood and amniotic fluid and looking at him angrily, mouth open and already wailing. Allison’s head falls back, exhausted, and Scott pushes her hair back from her forehead again. Stiles slumps forward for a moment, still draining some of her pain.

 

You place your hand on his shoulder, and he jumps, but doesn’t pull away. “Enough,” you say, “She’s okay.”

 

Stiles looks at you like he doesn’t really believe you, but he lets go. “I’m sorry,” he says to Allison suddenly. “I’m sorry it still hurt.”

 

Allison smiles at him, blinking dazedly, “It’s okay, Stiles. I knew it would. You helped so much,” she tells him, and only Allison would be able to brush past a traumatic, exhausting, painful experience in order to reassure someone. Stiles nods, biting his lip like he’s not sure he understands.

 

Isaac brings the baby back to Allison, swaddled in a towel with her umbilical cord cut. It’s as she’s passed to Allison that you get a whiff her and realize she’s a hundred percent human. There’s no trace of wolf in her. Boyd turns to you, realizing it at the same time, a confused look on his face.

 

Scott looks up to you like it pains him to tear his gaze away from his daughter, “I thought you  said she would be a wolf,” he asks, a look of surprise on his face. Underneath you can see relief, love, adoration, joy. Fatherhood is something you may never understand, but you don’t envy it. You feel happy, content, if not exhausted. Scott has gotten a perfectly normal, human baby. The wolf, if he so wishes, could end with him. You shrug, unable to find an answer.

 

“I was wrong,” you admit, “She smells like pack, though. But she’s human.”

 

She has a tiny tuft of hair on her head, her eyes still closed and her face pink and pinched. She is completely human.

 

“She’s beautiful,” Allison says, tears in her eyes again, but this time for a different reason, “She’s perfect.”

 

The rest of the pack seems to nod in agreement, all eyes fixated on the baby in her arms like she’s a tiny magnetic force field.

 

“What are you going to name her?” Erica asks.

 

But Allison shakes her head, “Isaac names her,” she insists, looking over the table over at Isaac. He smiles, cheeks red, hair ruffled and messy, and he looks, you think, he looks in love. With her or the baby, you don’t know. Probably both.

 

“Samantha,” he says slowly, eyes focused, “After mom. Selene,” he says, and he turns to you, nodding, eyes flickering again, a small smile threatening to grow on his face. “Selene, after you.”

 

“Samantha Selene,” Scott agrees quietly, running his two fingers over her forehead, “Sam for short. That’s good. That’s a good name.”

 

There’s a short reprieve before the table is too hard for Allison’s back now that the adrenaline has left her and the ache starts to really kick in again. Scott holds the baby like she is a beacon of light, like she is God wrapped up in a dish towel, and Isaac picks Allison up like she is both fragile and stronger than anything he’s ever seen.

 

“I need a bath, and a nap,” she says, blinking slowly, looking up at Isaac’s face unfocused. Erica strips the bloody towels off the table, attacking the bits of stained wood with a sponge and Boyd starts to run a load in the wash. It’s over, now. It’s all over. You release the breath you're holding.

 

Stiles is still sitting at the table. You tap his shoulder and he looks to you like he’s seeing you for the first time. He’s still wearing his too short sweatpants, a hand-me-down from Isaac. It makes him look so young. You motion at the back porch with a jerk of your chin and he nods numbly, rising to his feet like a foal learning to walk. The air is cold and bitter and refreshing from the smell of blood and baby and pack that stews hotly inside. Stiles is still barefoot on the icy deck, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care.

 

You both stand on the porch for a moment, watching golden streaks of rare winter sunlight peeking over the trees, peering through their barren branches. You take a deep breath.

 

“You froze up in there,” you say, but you don’t spare him a glance. If he wants to gather his bearings and readjust, you’ll leave him that reprieve. “You okay?”

 

“Just - memories. Unpleasant ones,” he says, and he chuckles wetly, letting out a shuddering breath. He hunches in on himself, shoulder blades sharp like enamel daggers threatening to pierce through his skin. He looks cold. You barely feel the breeze. It feels nice out here. It was too hot inside, too crowded.

 

“Why did they make you kill those cubs?” you ask him, tucking your hands under your armpits.

 

Stiles rubs the back of his neck. It looks like maybe, his hair is growing. It’s growing around the long scar that runs along the side of his skull and curves towards the back of his head, above his ear. You’ve never seen him with long hair. It’s always been buzzed. He had explained to you once that it was in tribute when his mom got sick, and then he just never had the heart to grow it back after she died. He used to carry her around in his heart when you met him. It was like meeting a teenage boy and her ghost. It’s easier now, but then, it’s been a decade.

 

“They didn’t make me,” Stiles finally says, biting his lip. “The mothers - they would ask me to. Because those ‘scientists’ would take them and experiment on the babies if I didn’t. The wolves - those women, they saw it better that their children die then grow up in the place we were in.”

 

“That’s - “ you say roughly, feeling a rush of anger surge into your bones “I - ”

 

“I learned to kill humanely. I learned to make them believe they were falling asleep. I used to think it must be relief, you know. I used to think I’d close my eyes and I’d see - well,” Stiles shakes his head, looking at his toes, “That I’d see my dad. Maybe mom.”

 

“I used to wonder, too,” you say, because you used think about killing yourself a lot. When your family died, and you spent most of your later teenage years on suicide watch with Laura. And then she was ripped from you, and you weaved in and out of depression that would leave you some days catatonic, other days reckless, angry. Take everything from me, you used to think when you were caught in a fight with another wolf. I’ve got nothing less but this damned beating heart.

 

“But I don’t think that’s how it works,” you say a second later. “I think we pass on differently. We all open at the close.”

 

Stiles nods, and then squawks suddenly and you turn to find ghost of a grin on his mouth, “You just quoted Harry Potter.”

 

You jut your chin, embarrassingly proud you got him to smile, “Harry Potter happens to know a lot about life.”

 

“You - I - I can’t,” Stiles laughs, pushing playfully on your bicep. A moment later, he asks, “Why did Isaac name the baby Selene - after you?”

 

You’re still unable to truly process having a child named in honor of you. It makes your chest tickle. “How much did the Crown’s explain to you about wolf lore?”

 

Stiles shakes his head, “Not much. I was really busy in school, and they were a lot less wolf-oriented and more family-oriented. We lived in a city, not much time to gallivant through the woods buck naked - “

 

“We don’t gallivant in the nude, Stiles,” you chastise, and he laughs.

 

“Why not? Very freeing,” he’s fucking with you, and for christ’s sake he looks like that eighteen year old boy again - except different. Better, maybe. Better in a way you can’t explain. It’s like watching something come back to life very slowly. You fix him with a half-hearted glare, and he puts in hands up in surrender. “Tell me,” he says, “Tell me about wolf lore. About Selene.”

 

“It differs all over the country, and all over the world, likewise. Eastern European wolves are going to have different stories than the West African wolves and the aboriginal wolves of Australia, to the First Nations, obviously. My mother was part European, part Native Indian. The wolf gene trickled through the European side. My father too,” you explain. You’ve only ever explained all of this to one other person, and she’s long, long gone.

 

Stiles nods, considering. He sits down on the edge of the back steps, and you follow suit. “My mother says that all wolves descended from Ancient Greek civilization, somewhere before or around that time. It’s hinted at that all astrological discoveries - the phases of the moon, the meaning of the stars, were discovered by wolves in disguise. We gave the Greeks their mythology. Lukanthropos in Greek translates to lycanthrope. Wolf-man.”

 

“Jesus shit,” Stiles says. You can practically see the cogs in his brain start to move.

 

“It is believed that while humans worshipped Zeus, ancient wolves deferred to someone else in secret. They used to get up at night to pray - fueling the tales of wolves only being seen in the dark. Their goddess was Selene. She is the personification of the moon, and her brother Helios,  the sun. They were both powerful for different reasons - but Selene is what moves us to shift, to heal, to have higher instinct. When we lose faith in our wolf, when we disconnect, we look to her for help,” you clear your throat, “My mother believed in old magic and old stories. She would tell us that in the perfect pack, you had twelve members, and they represented the twelve Olympians. She says that our wolve are tied to different Gods depending on who we are, because while the human parts of us are very young - the wolf is very old.”

 

“Like a Zodiac sign?” Stiles asks, his brow furrowed.

 

“Less gimmicky, more superstitious,” you say. “It’s not - it’s nearly never the twelve Gods. Sometimes you’re a star, sometimes a constellation, sometimes a minor God. Look,” you explain, hands flat and facing upwards against your knees. “Scott’s favorite constellation is Orion - he can’t explain it, but he’s drawn to it. He used to tell me that’d run along side the damn thing all night on full moons.”

 

“Orion...didn’t he..”

 

“Die after falling fatally in love with Artemis?” You say, smiling as the pieces start to fall together for him, “Yeah. Artemis. Goddess of the Hunt. Her symbol is bows and arrows.”

 

“Allison’s not a wolf, though. Selene doesn’t control her,” he intercepts excitedly and you nod in agreement.

 

“She doesn’t need to be. She’s Pack. She represents Artemis, even if she isn’t ruled by Artemis, and therefore, Scott is Orion. Always up in the clouds - but never failing to look out. The stories aren’t perfect, not even close. But they’re the closest thing to a religion we have. I think I knew by heart the entire collection of epic poems by Homer by the time I was nine.”

 

“So - what about - Erica? Or Boyd?” Stiles asks, and his open face, his craving for knowledge and information reminds you of when he used to type away at his Macbook, trying to determine the bestiary to the best of his limited supernatural knowledge. He had been such a kid then, trying to so hard to understand a world he wasn’t a part of. And now.

 

“Your wolves surprise you,”  you say quietly, “You can surprise yourself.”

 

“Wow,” Stiles breathes, “There’s so much to it. How come I’ve never looked up any of this before in high school?”

 

You shrug. “It’s superstitious. Faulty. Ancient. Not a lot of wikipedia on werewolf spirituality, I suppose,” you say. He laughs. All this talking has made you acutely tired and your jaw a little sore. You can’t remember the last time you were the majority speaker in any conversation.

 

You want to tell him, I believe because it makes me feel closer to my mother, and it makes me a better Alpha, but that requires digging. Instead you settle for, “It was incredibly special to have Allison’s daughter named after my Goddess. And Isaac knew that, and he felt the need to honor me. So that’s what it means.”

 

-

 

Later that evening, while Scott and Isaac come up with a feeding schedule at the kitchen table, Allison asleep with her feet in your lap in the living room, a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving on low, baby Sam nestled on her chest. She smells like Cora used to, like sweet smelling baby, drool, and milk. You realize suddenly that Stiles never asked you who he was - if his wolf had chosen an Olympian at all. You wonder if you spent all the time explaining to him only for him not to believe you, or if he didn’t want to know which one he would be.

 

You hope he’s not scared to ask.

 

-

 

You could tell that Stiles was starting to get restless staying inside all the time. He was sensitive to the cold in a way that you and the pack aren’t. It stirs bad memories of Northern Canada. It turns out his nervous excitability hadn’t left him when he was turned, after all; it just went away when he was Underground. It makes you sense, you think. Survival mode takes a lot away from who you are.

 

Sam is a week old when Allison sits down at the dining room table with a large cup of steaming tea between her small hands. She moves around like her body has been split in half and then sewn back together, unsteady and fragile. When you told her this, she said she felt almost exactly like that. Human birth, without anesthetic, or instant healing, had to be excruciating.

 

Stiles had been drawing a picture he had seen out of a lore book he checked out from the library a couple of days ago on a town trip with Erica. Allison taps the table to get his attention and he looks up, his face breaking into a small grin. He’s smiling more, you’ve noticed. They come easier to him now.

 

“Stiles,” she says, a coy smile on her face that you’ve gotten accustomed to avoid. Scott still falls victim to it. Isaac is better at resisting. “I’m taking ten weeks to be with Sam. Maybe longer.”

 

“That’s...good,” Stiles says slowly, unsure and confused.

 

Stiles doesn’t see where this is going yet, but you have an idea. You lean against the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee in your hand and watch Erica dump a pile paper work on top of the bread box and roll her eyes at you. You raise an eyebrow but she says nothing, grabbing a donut you brought home this morning.  Running as much as you do now with Stiles, and sometimes Boyd in the morning makes you ravenous. Stiles had suggested sugar, and then spent the whole ride ribbing you about your Toyota. It’s a utility vehicle. It’s practical. You’re nearly thirty. It’s not that weird.

 

It unnerves you how he can fit in so seamlessly with the pack and then also have missed so much. Six years isn’t a century, but it is a lot. He’s twenty-four, now. You still have a hard time believing it.

 

Allison’s mouth curves up into what you could only call a predatory smile. She cocks her head before saying, “Stiles, how well do you know your way around an espresso machine?”

 

-

 

It’s different with Stiles not always in the house. You used to have a schedule: He would wake you up at the first trickles of dawn, and you would both run. He ran like something was chasing him, towards a destination you couldn’t make sense of but followed him anyway. He ran like he knew this could all be over the next day. You kept wishing it was different, but it is what it is.

 

Stiles would come and make breakfast with Allison or with you. Sometimes Isaac would be there, sometimes with Melissa when they were carpooling to the hospital together. You would disappear for a few hours to your office and deal with the varying amounts of paperwork on your desk dealing with property leasing and shareholding. Sometimes when Stiles could sense your boredom he would slink in with a book or Isaac’s old laptop, quietly until he would find an absolutely outrageous cat video and felt compelled to show you. And well, you never said no to any of them.

 

It’s hard to say no to Stiles now than it ever has been before. You used to enjoy it, when he was a teenager. He was so used to getting his way and being right about absolutely everything that it was satisfying to cut him down a notch.

 

But not anymore. His bones may be made of metal but his heart is still fragile. Sometimes he sleeps nearly all day without stirring once. It’s even worse when he’s awake, but staring listlessly into the trees outside and uninterested in interacting with anyone. He has a  horrible tendency to border  between snarky and mean on his bad days, and you have an even worse tendency to push him when you shouldn’t. Old habits die hard.

 

Sometimes seeing him on days like this, when you both were in the house and neither of you had any reason to leave made you uneasy, and beneath that, makes you sad. Stiles reminds you a lot of yourself when you were twenty-four. It’s not a good thing.

 

Instead of Stiles, who now works at one of the Happy Houses and tries not to growl at customers who breach into his personal bubble (He swears it was one time and Erica is exaggerating anyway), there’s a lot more probable chance of seeing Allison with Sam, moving quietly through the house. Melissa is also a frequent visitor at the house now, still grumbling about not being called when Allison delivered the baby. Even though that was idiocy on Scott’s part, she blames most of it solely on you. You’re the Alpha. You should know better.

 

Sam hardly ever cries. It strikes you as strange. Mostly she just stares up at all of you with very big eyes and grabs at you with tiny, fragile, fingers. You are too tense and too terrified to hold her. She’ll be an interesting kid, you think. Raised by wolves.

 

It’s not that Stiles is never as loud or obnoxious as he used to be as a teenager but - it’s quiet, now, in the house.

 

You don’t complain. It’s good for him to get off the land. Allison saw this opportunity to get him into the real world again and she made it happen without him noticing. If you have learned anything since meeting Allison, it’s not to underestimate her.

 

-

 

You come home from the post office and the bank one afternoon to find the entire house decorated for Christmas. Scott has Sam in a sling across his torso, a giant sticky paper bow on her forehead, and Erica is cutting out snowflakes to tape to the walls. Stiles is covered in glitter from head to toe and he’s laughing when you come in. He’s wearing a flannel, and the sight is so comforting and normal it stops you in your tracks.

 

“Nice shirt,” you tease, but it sounds a bit strangled coming out of your throat. If Stiles notices, he doesn’t act like it. He rolls his eyes dramatically.

 

“Erica took me shopping...apparently somebody around here thought I needed some clothes,” he glares pointedly at you, and you shrug faux-innocently.

 

“Get over it, Stilinksi, it was necessary. You are an inch taller than Isaac,” she grumbles at him, chucking a handful of tinsel at his head.

 

“Was it really that bad?” you ask, nudging a box of ornaments out of the living room archway. Stiles gives you a deadpan look.

 

“Remember when you needed me you cut off your arm because if I didn’t you were going to die?” he asks, but doesn’t wait for you to respond, even though you do remember. “It was like that.”

 

“Now that’s just rude,” Erica snipes, eyes bulging. You can see the smile start to creep onto her face as Stiles riles her up.

 

You’re still smiling to yourself long after you leave them for the paperwork waiting in your office.

 

-

 

The clothes look good on Stiles. Flannels and long sleeve t shirts and well-fitted jeans, even a pair of chuck taylors he dug out of the attic. Erica told you that when she put Stiles’ new clothes away she found that he had hung his father’s sheriff’s jacket in the small cedar closet in his room. You don’t comment on it, or explain to her what you think it might mean; Erica understands that about you. She had brushed the top of your head with her palm as she left your office that night and you had closed your eyes at her touch.

 

He smells like coffee now, not all the time, but certainly after his shifts at Happy House. He seems to really like it, and Allison’s staff are friendly and entertaining and don’t stare at the scar on his face because she is critical of good character and runs her business like she runs your household: efficient, warm, inclusive.

 

You are happy for him, you are. He is becoming more like Stiles every day, and less like the empty, damaged wolf he was when he came to you. The color in his cheeks is returning, and his eyes are becoming more and more amber, the kind of molten gold you are used to.

 

Scott and Allison take turns being with Sam during the week, and sometimes Sam and Allison spend the day with Chris Argent or Melissa so there isn’t constantly a baby in the house. You want to tell them that they don’t have to do that on your behalf, that you don’t mind the hustle and bustle of family, but the words escape you.

 

Sam is quiet and she is warm, and she smells like Pack. You let her gum around your knuckles when she somehow ends up in your lap and you dangle your keys over her because you know it entertains her. As far as babies go, you like her. She is, as Isaac says, “a keeper.”

 

Stiles never holds her, and you wonder why that is. You don’t ask. Scott doesn’t push; there are things out of their control that have changed the dynamics of their relationship. Some things just take time.

 

-

 

December, you decide, is a good month. The trees in Beacon Hills are nearly all evergreens or redwoods, a trademark of Northern California, and so they don’t lose their leaves and the town remains shrouded in foliage and still beautiful. Sometimes when you run errands around town Stiles will tag along, requesting that you take the scenic route so you drive on all the winding highways through the trees. You are starting to realize, with a quiet panic, that there aren’t many things you would actually say no to when it comes to Stiles.

 

You rationalize that it’s because he’s another Alpha and he’s not Pack, even though he’s definitely family. It’s a tricky territory, one you aren’t sure how to bring up or approach with him. You rationalize it’s because he’s been through hell and come back from it and he deserves nice things.This is an equally tricky territory for you. It is not surprising that Stiles would be responsible for ruining your reputation as the grumpy Alpha.

 

On a Wednesday two weeks before Christmas, Boyd hands you a letter from your sister. You rarely see Boyd showcase any emotion besides mild annoyance or mild contentment, preferring to tackle all life obstacles with logic and patience; this is always something you have been extremely envious of. But now he’s look at you with a mixture of anxiety and excitement as you open it, skimming it briefly.

 

Cora has heard news from Allison that Sam has been born, and she’s coming up to spend the holidays with them instead. Because you are not an asshole, you hand over the letter to Boyd for him to read. Something in him seems to settle after he returns it back to you.

 

“Do you think she means to stay?” he asks, reclining in one of the leather chairs in your office that Stiles usually occupies when you’re in here working.

 

You shrug, folding your arms over your chest. The relationship between you and your younger sister has been rocky since you realized she was alive five years ago. You often think of all the damage you did when you were with her that year, but then you were also a damaged person, and perhaps it is better to realize that any real relationship didn’t stand a chance then. The Alpha pack and the disappearance of Erica and Boyd, at that time eighty percent of your rag-tag pack, had complicated it even more. Everything had been in shambles, and she deserved more.

 

Boyd looks slightly guilty. His return to the Pack and the lengths you had to go to get him is part of the problem between Cora and you. You had once told him he wasn’t at fault, because it was true, there was simply too much bad blood for you and Cora to work at that time, but you aren’t sure he believes you. Boyd shoulders too much.

 

But things have improved massively. Cora found solace in a Pueblo Pack in Arizona near the Salt river and she is happy there, last time you checked in. Allison and her constant emails and various cards have helped mend the bridge, and as far as you are aware, Isaac still emails her. In fact, you are looking forward to seeing your sister. You want her to see the house, and the land, and baby Sam. You want her approval.

 

“I’m assuming Stiles will be excited considering he’s never met her,” Boyd muses on his way out, and your gut drops. Shit.

 

-

 

Cora, predictably, does not give you any time to inform Stiles that you have family. You had a whole spiel planned and you were going to pull him aside after dinner, take him out back perhaps and explain Cora and the whole story of finding her the year after Stiles left for the East Coast. You had it all planned, and so naturally, it all goes to utter shit.

 

Cora arrives just as you are all sitting down to dinner. It’s one of those rare times everyone is home at the same time, and maybe this should have been a sign; Isaac had been on-call all afternoon and was decidedly not needed so he made dinner, and the new winter hours at Happy House meant Erica was able to come home earlier. Boyd, in his defense, was always around every night at six.

 

You’re spooning green beans onto your plate when Stiles visibly tense next to you, twitching violently and standing up, breathing and looking around the corners of the house. Erica shoots you a confused look, Scott pauses from where he was microwaving a bottle to wonder what the commotion is.

 

You put down the casserole dish very slowly. “Stiles - “

 

“There’s someone coming towards the house, ten miles south from us,” Stiles breathes, eyes flickering red. “A wolf.”

 

You all pause; usually your radars are a five mile radius, seven or eight if you’re in full form. He looks around at you sitting dumbfounded at the table, a pinched expression on his face. “What? Are we just going to sit here?”

 

“Stiles -” you say, but he’s already leapt out of his chair and through the back door, into the south facing woods of the Hale property. Isaac and Erica stand up too, waiting for your command.

 

Realization and utter dread dawns on you a split second too late “Cora,” you hiss, “She’s visiting. Go.”

 

It’s easier this time to track Stiles through the woods than it was the first time, as he smells like Isaac’s laundry detergent and Happy House coffee and dish soap and like Pack and you shift into Beta form, running as fast your body allows you to. Isaac, the quickest, runs ahead of you, and Boyd tails you with Erica as your right flank. Scott, true to Scott fashion, takes a detour to his left and disappears through the thicket.

 

Stiles is fast, though, possibly just as fast as Isaac, and you realize that he’s going to reach your sister before you are going to reach him. The best you can hope for at this point is there is no carnage when you catch up with him.

 

The trees clear unto a two lane highway and your senses are assaulted with a wave of emotion from Stiles, who is glowing bright red and poised for attack. You stumble with the realization that he is not bloodthirsty or out of control; he is trying to protect you. He is defending your land.

 

Cora is stand by her car door, face wolfed out and arms ready for combat, but you know your sister well enough that she does not want to go up against this wolf, and that she sees his blister red scars the same way you did the first time: danger. Stay away.

 

You bound in between them pressing your hand on Stiles’ chest against your better judgement. He snarls, bright red eyes rife with confusion.

 

“Don’t attack her,” you say and through your periphery you know Erica and Boyd have moved to flank Cora. You see what this must look like to Stiles: that you are protecting a stranger, that you are not protecting him. You can feel the mistrust radiating from him, the disbelief. “We know her. She’s not an enemy of ours.”

 

“Who is she then? A friend? An alliance? An old girlfriend?” he spits out girlfriend with so much contempt you nearly reel back from him.

 

“ _Girlfriend_?” Cora repeats back, outraged, “I’m his _sister_.”

 

“That’s not true. The Hale family died in a fire twelve years ago,” Stiles shakes his head, his eyes still fixed on you, like he’s waiting for you to call her out on her lies. Except she’s not lying.

 

“I didn’t, obviously,” she snarls, “Derek, tell him. Whoever this is, tell him I’m your sister before this franken-wolf rips me a new one - “

 

You feel yourself bristle on the comment about Stiles’ appearance, and you even hear Erica growl softly, just under her breath. Stiles falters, looking at you, losing his footing. He searches your face a moment too long and you know you don’t have to say anything for him to understand that she is in fact your sister, and you did in fact, not inform him of this.

 

It’s as if you can see whatever trust that had bridged between you is tangibly broken as Stiles takes a step back from you, so he is out of your reach. You feel his devastation through the tips of your fingers and you shift back. He doesn’t. This is a bad sign.

 

“Stiles,” you start to say, because if only you had more time to explain all of this, you would sit down with him and explain all of it, every last horrible detail of that first year after he had left Beacon Hills. He doesn’t allow you this, and you suppose you can’t blame him; this is not old, trusting, human Stiles, afterall. This is a prickly, paranoid, ghost-ridden Alpha who happens to wear Stiles’ face, and you should have known better.

 

Stiles growls at you in warning, before backing off and disappearing into the trees without a sound; it might as well be that he was never here a second before. Erica cusses behind you, her face human, and Boyd looks uncomfortable. Isaac looks utterly distraught at the friction that has been caused.

 

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell him you had a sister, Derek, for fuck’s sake,” Scott criticizes, face red. It is easiest for Scott, even after six years of being Pack, to be angry with you, “You spend all your fucking time with him, and you neglect to tell him something like this.”

 

You don’t have any defense. Scott shoots you another disgusted look, and turns to Isaac, running a hand down his back in comfort. All you can say is, “Don’t run after him.”

 

Scott looks like he’d like to do anything but obey you, and it’s an order and he will. He sends you one more withering look of abhorrence before taking off with Isaac towards the house. Erica is visibly uncomfortable around your sister, as she always has always been, and probably always will be. She departs, but not before brushing the back of her hand against your bicep. Her heart beats loudly in your ears for a moment, and then she’s gone, too.

 

“You have a lot of fucking explaining to do, brother,” Cora growls, and you bow your shoulders like you’ve been scolded. She rolls her eyes and stalks back to her Jeep Cherokee. “Get in.”

 

-

 

You explain to Cora as briefly as you can the situation at hand. She hisses low between her teeth when you reach the Underground prison that Stiles was trapped in for the last two years.

 

“I’ve heard of that. Thought it was bullshit to scare other wolves,” she said, shooting you a look that you aren’t able to decipher.

 

“You’re going to have to tell me everything you’ve heard about them. We need to know if there are more of those hunters out there, or anyone associated with them.”

 

Your sister nods, and accelerates; you can smell the house and the land. “I would apologize to him for what I said except that he was more than ready to kill me.”

 

You frown uneasily, “I didn’t really tell Stiles you existed. He left the year before you came into Beacon Hills and since he’s been back it’s just…”

 

“...been a little chaotic,” Boyd finishes for you, and you glance back at him gratefully.

 

“Jesus, Derek,” Cora rolls her eyes, “Leave it to you omit something as important as me.”

 

“Sorry,” you say, but you can tell it’s more banter than scolding now, and you brave a small smile, “Could visit us more often, and then I wouldn’t forget. Because you’d be here.”

 

“Speaking of visiting,” Boyd clears his throat, “There’s a lot of stuff back here. For Christmas. I mean.”

 

Cora grits her teeth as she pulls into your gravel driveway, nearly clipping your Toyota and parking haphazardly. “Yeah. About that. I’m sort of, pregnant. And staying. For a while. Maybe forever.”

 

You cuss loudly, and Cora shrugs, shouldering a duffel bag twice her size, “Don’t get too excited, brother.”

 

Boyd is considerably flushed when he climbs out of the back of the Cherokee. You may even call it blushing.

 

-

 

Your first instinct is to find Stiles ad make amends, except it’s pretty clear Stiles does not want to be found, so you follow Cora into the mud room and through to the kitchen, where she promptly hugs Allison, who has Sam wrapped around her front in a sling and is spooning food into tupperware. Distantly you feel bad for being half-responsible in fucking up one of Isaac’s dinners.

 

You are looking at Cora for the first time, truly seeing her since she made her dramatic entrance back into Beacon Hills. Her hair is longer than you’ve ever seen it, nearly down to her waist, and braided in a long french braid, one similar to the ones your mother would do for her as a little girl. She looks more - as strange as it is for you to say - womanly. Softer and less lanky, more feminine, commanding. She looks strikingly like your mother now, more so than Laura ever did, and there are pieces of your brother Noah in her face, too. None of your father, though. That’s all you.

 

You can tell by the way she moves that she is an elevated position in her Pack, maybe a Second like Scott or perhaps the token female like Erica. When she finally gets around to hugging you, looking begrudgingly to do so but clutching just as tight, you smell no Pack on her. There’s a story behind that. Maybe she truly has left Arizona for good.

 

Gradually, after hellos and how are yours are exchanged, the pack dispearses. Scott and Erica go for a late night run to Safeway in town, probably for ice cream and diapers, and Allison retires to her room for a bath from the sounds of running water. Isaac feeds Sam a bottle in front of an episode of the Simpsons, for which you try to tune out. The voices grate on your ears. Only Boyd remains, tidying and busying himself in the kitchen while you and your sister sit at the dining room table. It’s somewhat uncharacteristic of him, but you let it be.

 

Cora digs into a cold plate of boiled potato, tri-tip and garlic green beans, sniffing the table after a moment.  She wrinkles her nose. “This smells like blood.”

 

You shrug wrly, “Allison had to have her baby somewhere,” you say, biting your lip in order to hold back a shit-eating grin. Cora looks at it with horror.

 

“Talk about old school. Holy shit. You still eat off this?” she demands, half laughing.

 

You shrug for a second time, “Blood is blood, no matter where it came from. The new one is the mail,” you flick her nose and she growls, low in her throat, “Enough about the damn table. How about you tell me what the hell you think you’re doing winding up pregnant and unbonded.”

 

Cora looks slightly abashed, “You’re so old fashioned. First having babies at home, now guilting your sister for not being mated. Plenty of wolves have babies out of bond-lock,” she shrugs flippantly, like it’s not really a big deal. But it is. You don’t want to even think of your sister being with child, let alone having sex.

 

She scoffs, pushing her plate away from her and crossing her arms, “Kind of hypocritical, don’t you think, seeing as you nearly mated with a human. Talk about controversial.”

 

Boyd drops whatever he was holding in the sink and it clatters loudly, and you feel your eyes bleed red. “Cora,” you warn lowly, “Don’t push me.”

 

Her lips pull back into a snarl. “You pushed first, brother.”

 

Cora relents, knowing she's touched a nerve. She turns her head to the side then, baring her neck. "The father isn't involved. Doesn't want to be. Neither does my Pack."

 

"What right does he have to abandon you and the child?" you ask indignantly, your fist curling into itself. Anger is an old, old, friend, and it feels almost like relaxing when it finds you. At least you have a right to be angry right now. It's worse when you don't.

 

Her short, mirthless laugh is awful, her smile too adult, like she's grown up too fast. "He's the Alpha-by-marriage of sorts."

 

Your gut clenches. "He didn't - he didn't take advantage of - "

 

Cora flushes, throwing her hands up, "No, Jesus. This isn't like you and - "

 

Your fist slams down against the table, and the wood groans underneath the impact. "Strike two, Cora. For fuck's sake."

 

Cora moves on like you haven't just wolfed out on her. This is non-reaction is perhaps a trait only born-wolves have, since they usually grow up with sudden bouts of tempermental wolfing between siblings. Broken bones and claw fights were the norm. She continues, "They're not bonded, so I assumed fidelity wasn't an issue. Apparently it is, and Ida gave me the boot."

 

"But you're family," you protest, even though you wince at the problems your sister probably caused.

 

"Ida saw only Talia as her distant cousin, and she's right. They're distinctly full-blooded North American wolves. Mom had too much European wolf in her to ever be too close," Cora sighs heavily, and she has this look on her face that always seems to appear when she talks about your mother. "It's fine. It was time to come back here, to see the house, and stop running. Time to grow up."

 

Cora looks old and young at the same time. She is twenty two in her human bones and one hundred and six in her fur. Her skin has that youthful dewy sheen to it, but the bags under her eyes are tell-tale signs of one too many nights tossing and turning. You see wisps of blonde and silver intertwined in her braid, and her freckles stand stark against her skin. She is tired, but she is bright. You feel tender, and vulnerable for her.

 

You reach out across the table for her hand. Her's is dwarfed by yours. "You don't have to grow up just yet."

 

Cora smiles softly, grasping your fingers. "I think I do, brother. Accept me back into your Pack so I can grow in peace."

 

You resist rolling your eyes at her, instead flashing them Alpha red. "I accept."

 

-

 

You sleep alone that night. You dream fitfully,  but can't remember any of them later.

 

-

 

Stiles is standing at the end of your bed, prodding the bottom of your foot with his index finger. It's early, and you're grumpy, and it tickles. He's lucky you don't even growl when you come to.

 

"Hey," you croak, sitting up and swinging your feet out of bed. The floorboards are cold, but they feel good against your hot skin. "Listen."

 

But Stiles shakes his head. You had a speech prepared. You were ready to force that apology out of your mouth so help you God. He always seems to ruin your grand endeavors, even when he was a puny teenager.

 

"I'm not angry at you," he says, which takes you by surprise: Scott certainly still is. He's not wearing a shirt, and the scars on his chest look like little raised patterns circling his sternum, almost like a design. They are not unattractive. Maybe they are a symbol of something. You force your eyes up to look at him directly. He has been running all night. He smells like wet forest, and rainwater, and it is intoxicatingly sweet to your nose.

 

"I...should have told you. I was careless. Wasn't thinking," you admit. Stiles nods, accepting it for what it is.

 

"I was mostly angry at myself. I was ready to kill her. I felt something unknown around this house - something I have come to call a sanctuary, and I just absolutely lost it," Stiles says, and it makes you feel extremely guilty. He looks down at his hands, and then up at you. His eyes are large and round. "This is why you have to tell me things."

 

You should apologize, you should tell him it's okay, that you understand. Hairtriggers are something you understand intimately. But it's not enough. You pass him your down jacket, a present from Erica two years ago. "Let's go outside."

 

Stiles looks at you curiously but slips the jacket on, zipping it up as far is it goes. He follows you out to where you sit on the front porch, the grass outside sparkling with ice crystals. You take a deep breath, and the cool air feels final, gives you a sense of where to start.

 

"The year after you left for school, that following summer, there was an Alpha Pack," you start. It had been one of the most terribly times of your life, and that is including the year most of the Hale family burnt to the ground. "We were outnumbered and overpowered largely. Scott wouldn't join me, preferring to function on his own, and Allison had returned from Berkley that summer hellbent on making every lycanthrope she knew pay."

 

You glance over at Stiles, who has threaded his long fingers together, his thumb absentmindedly stroking the scar on his palm. He doesn't say anything, so you continue. "Boyd and Erica left to find - something - anything and were captured by the Alpha Pack. They killed Erica," you say, and Stiles makes a discontent noise in his throat. You pause, waiting for him.

 

"They killed - " he says, as if he didn't hear correctly, but then makes an aborted movement with his hands. "I'm sure this story will eventually make sense, go on."

 

"They killed Erica, and I found her and brought her back to the original Hale property," you point East, towards a dense thicket of woods to your left, "Over there. I then went looking for Boyd, and found Cora."

 

"She had been alive this whole time," Stiles murmurs.

 

You nod, "She doesn't remember much from when she escaped the fire. Apparently, a witch found her in a fugue state and sent her to go live with a pack in Nevada. One of the Alphas in that pack was also an Alpha in the Alpha pack, and took her as collateral," you squint, as if that will help your memory, "At least, that is how she explained it."

 

"We are so going to talk about Witches later, man," Stiles smiles but it’s still awkward, like he’s trying to make amends. He shakes his head, and then prompts you. "So you find your suddenly alive sister, and then..."

 

"And then it all goes to utter shit. The Alphas wanted Scott, believing he was a true Alpha. Which - he was - is - except. Well. It gets complicated. There was this Druid."

 

Stiles nods slowly, "A Druid. Of course. Probably hot as hell, right? Go on."

 

"She was killing people in threes - she had a vendetta for the Alpha pack, and she was using this tree stump called the Nemeton to seduce all this power."

 

"The Nemeton," Stiles repeats, "Sounds like a transformer."

 

"If only," you snort, "More like a magnet for trouble. So Scott and Allison and Isaac come up with this plan to find the Nemeton and stop its power. They go to Deaton, who had them pledge their...souls to it. They're connected to each other and the Nemeton seamlessly after that."

 

"So Scott couldn't be the All Powerful Alpha Alpha because he pledged his heart to a tree stump?" Stiles summarises, and you are unable to hide your smile, even though most of those memories aren't anything you'd ever laugh about.

 

"He was for a while. But the darkness around the Nemeton, and the connection he now shares between him and the tree stump and Allison and Isaac, it was too much. He was losing control of himself. He nearly killed Allison one night, except that Isaac was there to stop him. Allison was the one," you say slowly, "To put the Pack back together."

 

"Sounds like Allison," Stiles says quietly. " Also sounds like a lot of shit."

 

"It was a tremendous amount of shit. The Alphas also killed Boyd, but this was before Allison had come to me, to pledge herself to rebuilding a Hale Pack. I was alone. I was...vulnerable," your mouth feels dry and uncomfortable, and it hurts to swallow. Your teeth feel like they did the first time they came in as fangs, like you can't talk around them. Stiles is oddly quiet, no comments and questions and eyebrow raising.

 

"I...my father knew this Hag. Different from a Witch. Not as morally bound, generally not Pagan," you explain, "She sometimes crosses in through Beacon Hills once every twenty odd years. She heard of all the commotion of the Nemeton, and so she came back," you find that studying the odd bumps and rough patches of your hands helps keep the words in the right order. "She told me that Boyd and Erica were killed by unnatural magic - the unnaturalness of the Alpha Pack meant they were in this sort of death limbo. And that I could bring them back."

 

"Holy fuck, Derek," Stiles breathes, and you nod, hurriedly, like you agree without even having to know what he's implying. You need to finish, or you won't ever.

 

"I thought I was going to die. I had just found my sister, and there was a Pack intent on killing me, and my own Pack consisted of two wolves stuck in Magic-Death-Limbo. It wasn't great," you grimace, "The Hag told me that if I made a sacrifice, you know, of equal worth, they would come back as if waking up from a long sleep."

 

Stiles eyes go soft, and you can see his hand reach out for yours before it drops, suspended between you. "Who did you kill?"

 

You shake your head, "No one. I dug up all the bones of my family, everyone who had died, and I put them in the old Hale house, and I burnt it all down to ground."

 

You grip your hands and wring them together to keep them from shaking. "It's not a good thing to do. Wolves die in nature, with all their parts and pieces with them so they pass on into the earth. My mother believed much the same for our kind, and I disobeyed that."

 

Stiles shakes his head, "but you saved Erica, and Boyd. They probably wouldn't have moved on either, if they were stuck."

 

"Yeah," you say, "and they did come back. Except Erica has dreams of dirt and dust filling her lungs so she can't breath, and Boyd walks around with this suffocating guilt," you smile ruefully, "Pot calling kettle black, I guess."

 

Your fingers are itching to grab his, but you resist. This moment is too raw and too naked to be ruined, it would be too much. "That's why," you finish, "You didn't meet Cora immediately. She had a hard time forgiving what I did to our parents. I don't blame her."

 

Both of you sit in silence, and then Stiles says, "It makes sense, now. The way this Pack works. It's more intimate than other Packs, more like family and less like a hierarchy. Not to say the Crowns didn't love each other - but they were also blood first, wolves second."

 

It's a roundabout way of Stiles accepting what you did, and understanding you did what you thought was best. You breathe, and your lungs don't feel like lead anymore.

 

Stiles chuckles humorlessly to himself, running a hand through his slightly grown out hair and stands up. His hand is outstretched for yours, and even though it’s unnecessary - such a human custom - you take it anyway.

 

He’s already stepping out of his pajamas and your jacket, a grin stretching across the plains of his face. “Time to run.”

 

You return his smile gratefully, shrugging out of your henley. You give him a head start, but soon you’re gaining on him. It’s like you're running with new legs, like your bones are made of air.

 

-

 

Cora is sitting on the front porch with her legs crisscrossed underneath her and holding a large mug of steaming tea. Her hair is parted down the middle and braided down each side, just like your maternal grandmother used to wear her own hair. You keep forgetting how much you missed your sister. She is the only link left between the life you had before the fire and the life you have now.

 

Stiles and you dress before you depart from the woods and into the front lawn. Cora nods her head once at Stiles, and that’s probably the only forgiveness that Stiles is going to get from her. You watch Stiles' reaction out of the corner your eye, wondering if you should act as a barrier. Stiles nods his head once, teeth bared in a sharp smile before he bypasses both of you into the house.

 

Faintly, you can hear Boyd and Erica bicker over what Christmas music they want to play. You secretly hope Boyd wins. You can tolerate Louis Armstrong and Eartha Kit, but you draw the line at Mariah Carey.

 

“I think Allison told me all there is to know about babies,” Cora says, making a face. “Baby poop is probably the second foulest thing I’ve ever come across.”

 

“Second?” you raise an eyebrow, taking a seat next to her. Two hours ago, Stiles was in her spot.

 

She smiles wryly at you, “Nothing tops the stench of dead, rotten, flesh.”

 

You scowl, knocking your shoulder into her’s, “You’re not as funny as you think you are.”

 

“And you’re not as hard as you think you are,” she shoots back,  “Allison also told me that my brother has a soft, gooey center.”

 

“Bull,” you dismiss immediately, eliciting a peal of laughter out of Cora.

 

She smiles softly at you, her left dimple peeking out. “I’ve missed you.”

 

“Yeah,” you say softly, clearing your throat and staring at the spot where you and Stiles emerged from. “It’s good to have you home.”

 

“And Stiles,” your sister says, and then looks at you, waiting for a response.

 

And Stiles. And Stiles.

 

You just grunt noncommittally. She raises an eyebrow, lifting her mug up to take a long sip.

 

“Well,” she says a second later, “Tell me about him. You love him.”

 

“Cora,” you snap, groaning,  “Seriously.”

 

She just shrugs, unperturbed. “You carried around that hole in your heart that year we found each other. I thought it was just losing mom and dad and the family, and the guilt fuckery that comes along with that, but,” she sighs, “but of course, I put it together. He abandoned you. You probably trusted him or cooked up some fantasy in your head, and he ruined that.”

 

You glare at her. “Are you finished?” and then, “He didn’t abandon me, he went to college,” because you can’t help it.

 

“It doesn’t matter what his reasons were. You probably considered him a part of the little sham of a pack you had back then. Whatever. Suppose its best he’s a wolf now. Humans make dangerous Pack members, don’t they?”

 

“Allison is human,” you point out. You don’t like it when Cora thinks she can see right through you, and it’s even worse when she’s completely right.

 

“Al has proven herself more than enough, seeing as half her family has been slaughtered by us,” Cora refutes, “Not that those said family members didn’t completely deserve it, but it would human of her to not to think that. Obviously, she chose you anyway.”

 

You catch Boyd out of the corner of your eye climbing into his truck and pulling out of long driveway. You turn to Cora, petulant response on the tip of your tongue, when you catch her staring at him peeling out of the driveway. You pause, considering.

 

“He’s doing well. A lot better than when you last saw him. I think he’s finally realized we’re not going to abandon him anymore, and he’s opened up more,” you say softly, shrugging when Cora glares at you. “I think he missed you.”

 

“Don’t be stupid,” she snaps, and your laughter seems to irritate her further.

 

“I know it’s hypocritical for me to say this,” you say, standing up, “But you might want to consider taking your head out of your ass.”

 

-

 

It’s a week from Christmas when you find Stiles on the living room couch. He’s curled up underneath the quilt you keep on the back of the armchair by the fireplace. He’s smiling softly, and that’s when your attention is drawn to what he’s watching on the tv.

 

“Arent you supposed to be at work right now?” you furrow your brow. Stiles is usually out of the house by eleven, and when you came home from your morning errands you were surprised that the house smelt of activity. It occurs to you now that while his scent is faint, it’s there.

 

He shrugs, unbothered, but he bends his knees so you can sit down next to him. Once you do, he promptly places his feet in your lap. When you glare at him, he just snickers smugly.

 

“I gave the shift to Cora,” he says over yet another commercial. “I get kind of sick at being stared at.”

 

“Most of your scarring isn’t visible to them,” you say, trying to placate him.

 

But Stiles just shrugs again, half his cheek mashed up into the couch pillow. “I know,”he murmurs after a beat. “That’s the worst part.”

 

You hand finds his ankle and you rub your thumb against the bone there. Stiles foot twitches at first, but he doesn’t say anything. “What are we watching?”

 

He snorts, curling his arm around the couch pillow, “Elf.”

 

You distantly remember seeing that one Christmas with your whole family. Christmas was one of the rare outings your entire family made at once on Christmas day. Your parents used to pile you into the car after a long breakfast that morning, you usually sitting cramped between Laura and Noah, who were engaged in tireless bickering and fighting since birth. You, like your father, had never been the argumentative type. You were quiet, though, whereas he could fill up a room with just his laugh.

 

Stiles used to be that way, too. He was never useless to the Pack in the ways that he thought. If nothing else, he was the glue. In his senior year alone he certainly held you together.

 

The movie progresses. Stiles laughs, mostly into his sleeve but sometimes out loud and it startles you every time until you start watching him out of the corner of your eye, waiting for it.

 

“You know I’ve only ever been to New York  once the entire time I was studying in Boston,” Stiles says during a commercial break. There are laugh lines on his face and his body is relaxed, warm and supple against yours. You feel sleepy and sated against the back of the couch. He looks to you, “I could hardly picture you living there, to be honest.”

 

“How do you picture me?” you ask, because you can’t help yourself. Your neck lolls around the back of the couch, your eyes at half mast.

 

Stiles shrugs, looking up at you from his end of the couch. “Kind of like this. Woodsy, with lots winding roads and dirt and old houses.”

 

Your smile slips over your face like molasses. “Laura wanted to go to New York. She took dance in this after school program. She had this dream of being a prima-ballerina, and you can’t be anything like that in Beacon Hills.”

 

“I can imagine she was good, better than anything found here.”

 

You nod, “Yeah. Our father had installed a bar in her room by the time she was fourteen,” you remember the accumulating pile of pointe shoes and leotards that would end up in the family laundry pile. Laura’s hair was always piled high up into a bun, accentuating her sharp cheekbones and jawline. She had the structure of a true Alpha. “She was at dance the day our family was murdered. I thought she’d never dance again, but it only seemed to make her more driven. So we went to New York.”

 

“Derek Hale in Brooklyn at the trendiest joint, rubbing elbows with all the up and coming writers. What an image,” Stiles teases. You laugh, shaking your head.

 

“I would have followed my sister anywhere. I felt responsible. Mostly I stayed up with a Syracuse Pack who were sympathetic to us.”

 

Stiles shakes his head, “you know that you weren’t responsible though, right?”

 

It’s the soft amber glow to his eyes that make you want to be honest. He makes you want to spit truth after truth. “Sometimes,” you swallow, “Sometimes, it’s hard. I wake up and forget. But then a second later, I remember. It’s not as bad anymore. It used to destroy entire days, weeks.”

 

“I understand,” he nods solemnly, his face open and honest. You know he understands because you witness it happen to him every so often: there are days when even getting out of bed is too much to ask. The Pack is good at handling it, they have experience from dealing with you. It’s different, seeing it from the outside perspective. You are both terrified of it and reluctantly curious.

 

You wake up to the muffled sounds of Isaac and Scott in the kitchen, bickering about microwave times for milk. Stiles is still asleep next to you, his cheeks pink and his skin hot to touch. The Santa Clause is playing on the television, but it’s been turned down, and someone has placed a blanket over you. You ignore the blush in your face and close you eyes again, Stiles’ steady breathing lulling you back under.

 

You don’t remove your hand from his ankle.

 

-

 

Christmas  eve is always spent as a Pack. Allison and Isaac usually do most of the cooking, less excessive than Thanksgiving but somehow more special. Erica spends all night mixing extremely strong drinks that even your fast metabolism can't burn without a little side effect. She's getting good at it. Boyd always starts the fire in the wood burning stove, watching it carefully, and usually Scott is at work until just before dinner - but this time he's sitting at the dinning room table with you, and your sister, playing rummy.

 

Sam is bundled in the crook of one of his elbows, fast asleep. Her cheeks are bright pink. He's probably too warm for her. Cora has a giant sweater on that smells of old cedar wood and musty hints of cinnamon. She had slipped it on and spun around in your room to show you just before everyone had come home. It nearly swallowed her petite frame, but it looked warm and comfortable, and you've learned those are two things your sister likes over anything.

 

"It was mom's when she was pregnant with me. Aunt Carol up in Seattle had all her maternity clothes," she explained, looking at you gently. You realize you're wincing.

 

"I can't remember what mom smells like," you explain, and feel immediately full of shame. Cora whines softly in her throat, swallowing thickly.

 

"I can't either. Sometimes I think I dream it," she admits, and you two look at each other from across your bedroom. A beat passes. "It's nice, though. To still have things of her's."

 

You nod. Cora leaves a piece of plastic holly on your dresser as she exits. She stops by your door, idling, "This house is beautiful. They would have been proud."

 

-

 

You all open presents after dinner, stomachs bursting with turkey and ham and cranberry pie in the living room. You can tell which present is from who just by the wrapping: Boyd and Allison compete each year for the most perfectly wrapped gift, while Erica goes the gift bag route because she can't be fucked. Isaac's are usually some form of tape and bow disaster. You wrap yours in newspaper and masking tape and refuse to even step near a sticky bow.

 

It's the same as usual: gift cards to the movies, sweaters, socks, books, and weird mechanic gadets Boyd always wants. This year has new additions: baby clothes, swaddles, books on babies that are given to both Isaac and Scott, a typewriter for Cora.

 

Every year the pack schemes together and gets a large present for you despite your constant rebukes and disapproval. You had come home this morning from your run with Stiles to find a refurbished Harley motorcycle sitting next to your Toyota with an onstentacious ribbon on it and nearly doubled over with laughter. It was exactly something you would want and never something you ever get for yourself. And the Pack knows that.

 

The last gift is for Stiles under the tree, covered in black and white print. He grins at you mischieviously, threatening that if he gets any more books he might never resurface from his room again. You tuck your hands underneath your thighs when you realize you're twitching with anxiety, biting your lip and trying not to focus too hard on his long fingers taking apart the tape.

 

"Jesus fuck, just rip it," Cora teases and Stiles shrugs, ripping the last piece of paper off. He stares down at it for a while, face unreadable, and you feel your stomach drop. Fuck.

 

"What is it, Stiles?" Allison says gently, and he looks up at her, passing it over wordlessly. You feel the horror fill your gut when you see his eyes are filled with tears. She gasps, quietly, brushing her fingers over the protective glass of the shadow box.

 

"I'm sorry," you say, humiliated, "I thought you - I had - I thought you might like it."

 

Stiles makes a strange noise and shakes his head, "It's _amazing_. I don't know how you found it. Thank you."

 

You stare at him for a moment. "Oh."

 

The shadow box finally reaches Scott, and wraps an arm around Stiles, tugging him forward, "This is your dad's badge, Stiles."

 

He rubs his forehead into Scott's neck, smiling down at the shadow box containing the only badge you could find in Stiles' old house when you and Boyd and Scott did that estate sale six years ago. It had sat in your drawer up until last week. Stiles laughs but his chest shakes, "I know."

 

Cora looks over, and you pointedly don't return her questioning stare.

 

When the wrapping is thrown away in a giant trashbag, and everyone has seperated into different parts of the ouse to sleep off their food babies, Stiles reaches over for you while you're drying the remaining dishes. His eyes are glassy.

 

"Thank you," he says, his fingers digging into the skin of your wrist for a moment. "Sincerely."

 

-

 

Christmas day is always quiet. It's a good rest day for an introvert like you after all the excitement of the day before. Allison and Scott and Isaac split their time between Chris Argent and Melissa McCall's, while Boyd and Erica used to go visit Boyd's grandmother. After she passed, they visited Erica's foster father and Boyd's great uncle and his family a town over. This year, Cora went with them. It seemed Cora's own decision surprised her more than it did you.

 

You wake up that morning to a silent house and snow on the ground outside. Beacon Hills is close enough to Tahoe and the mountains that it snows, but only once every few years.

 

You pad quietly to the end of the hall to Stiles' room, surprised he didn't wake you up first. The white snow on the trees contrasts the dark green of his room nicely. The shadow box is already hanging on the wall by his window, his dad's sherrif's badge the only thing up on the walls. His room in high school was covered ceiling to floor in posters of bands and comics you had never heard of or read.

 

You're quietly surprised to see him still curled up on his bed, staring out the wall. Distantly you hope it isn't a bad day for him, but when you enter his doorway he lifts his head and smiles.

 

"No run today," you say, and sit on the edge of his bed when he notions for it. He's wearing a thick sweater that seems to swallow him whole, only the slender slice of his neck sticking out from the stretched collar. "Don't go easy on me because it's Christmas."

 

Stiles smiles, "Never go easy on you, not even when you're old," he teases, "I just hate snow."

 

He looks exhausted, like he hasn't slept all night. You pat his thin calf, "We can stay in all day. Got the entire place free of annoying wolves."

 

"Hey," Stiles grins, his face relaxing at your suggestion, "I happen to like those annoying wolves."

 

"Me too," you say, turning to look out the window at the snow falling outside. Stiles curls into himself, pushing his back against the wall. He slides his wrist against the flannel sheets, gesturing.

 

You lie down next to him, cramped on his twin bed until you roll onto your side, your knees touching his. He looks tired and sort of sad, the bags under his eyes pronounced and grayish-purple.

 

"Didn't sleep last night," he murmurs, his eyes looking at your mouth. "Nightmares."

 

You reach over, placing your hand against his chest and close your eyes, waiting for the pain to start seeping into your veins. A moment later you reopen them to find no black swirling into your skin. Stiles regards you tiredly and you realize that's he blocking you.

 

"Let me," you say. You want to ask him how the hell he knows how to do that, but some of his acquired Alpha powers come with particularly gruesome stories and - it's just - you'd rather not. Not when you are here with him and it is quiet and you aren't fighting and you don't feel self-concious and you both just exist between these four walls. His touch is warm and his hands are large when they run up your arm, they were always larger than the rest of him. When he was growing up he had been this thin, gangly teenager with these incredibly adult hands. Your mother would have said that was a symbol, at least with wolves, that they carry too much.

 

Now he is twenty four and scarred and muscular and incredibly thin for a wolf. His cheekbones are sharp and his eyes sharper, they burn an intense molten gold. He still carries too much.

 

He shakes his head against the pillow, "No. I need to be able to sleep without it."

 

"But you're in pain," you don't whine. You're not whining - he's just being incredibly stupid right now, and you can tell from the angles of his bones that he's exhausted and aching, and he won't let you help.

 

"So let me be in pain," he says simply, breathing in and sighing. You scowl.

 

"Pain in my ass, sure," you murmur, and feel your stomach flip when Stiles smiles as his eyes slip closed. His hand comes to cup around your wrist.

 

"Stay."

 

You can't think of anywhere you'd be right now, anyway, but here.

 

-

 

You must have been more tired than you thought because when you wake up, it's dark out. You've drooled nearly all over Stiles' mattress. He is curled up against the inside crook of your elbow, cheek smash unattractively into your skin. You feel like you've entered another dimension, as stupid and sci-fi as that sounds, because the room is dark and warm, and it is night outside but the snow keeps the sky just a light gray. Stiles is asleep next to you, and he looks at peace.

 

Your hand comes up to run through his hair, growing out of his buzz cut a bit. The hair won't regrow over the scar curving around the side of his head, but it doesn't matter anyway. He sighs, rubbing his eyelids and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

 

"I didn't even dream," he says, his voice husky with sleep. He opens one of his eyes to peer at you. "You're still here."

 

"Did you not want me to be," you ask, but most of it is banter. If Stiles asked you to stay earlier, he meant it. That has never changed about him. True to form, he fixes you with an incredibly deadpan look.

 

"This has to be the best Christmas I've had since I was seventeen," he says a moment later, and something inside you twinges a little. It had been years before you remembered what Christmas was supposed to feel like, and, it was bittersweet when you realized you enjoyed your first Christmas since your family had died.

 

"I want to apologize," you say quietly and Stiles peers at you with a questioning stare. "We never went looking for you. Never thought that it was strange that you had just not come back after graduating from Northeastern."

 

"Derek - " he starts, but you hold your hand up. It's been sitting in your gut for weeks, months since he came back and now that it's just you two and no one to interrupt or overhear or fix you with some incredibly judgemental look, you need to say it. You might never if not now, and that scares you.

 

"No. We should have - we all wondered but - I knew you wanted nothing to do with me. I knew you hated me for not saving your father, and so I forbade them from following up on you."

 

"I don't blame you for dad," Stiles sighs, then he shrugs, "Well, I did. But I was eighteen and an orphan. I was angry and so sick of watching people die or almost die around me. I needed someone to blame," he says, "I was bitten by complete concidence. By some random Alpha who had gone feral and was desperate. The Crowns took me in. Helped me grow. When they died," he swallows, "I realized - I realized what that must have felt like for you. To be capable of saving lives and it still not being enough."

 

The room is quiet for a moment, the air heavy between you. He knocks his knees into your's, pulling his quilt up against his shoulder. Finally he says, "I used to dream about you a lot when I was Underground. You kept asking me to come back."

 

You can feel your wolf starting to whine softly inside of you and you squeeze your eyes shut for a second, blood flooding your cheeks. You feel his hand, the rough callous of his palm, the clammy touch of his fingers against your cheek.

 

"You were asking me, weren't you. Somewhere in there," he whispers, sounding distraught and a little like he's on the verge of laughing hysterically. "Fuck this."

 

You don't get to ask him what he means before his lips touch yours. At first hesitantly, surprisingly soft and gentle, his bottom lip fitting just underneath your top. You feel your hand run down his back as you pull him closer, flush against you, warm and smelling of sleep and of you. He starts to really kiss you then, teeth and the hot slip of tongue against your bottom lip, along your teeth. You feel your brow furrow as you clutch at him, pulling him closer until you can't anymore.

 

"If you don't want to do this, tell me now," Stiles whispers when you break apart, his cupid's bow shiny with your saliva. " _Derek_. For fuck's sake."

 

"How could you think I wouldn't want this?" you blurt stupidly, your brain trying to catch up with his. "I've wanted - I wanted this since - "

 

"That was a long time ago," he hurries, covering your mouth with his again, "We're not the same."

 

"I don't want to be the same," you admit, and Stiles looks relieved at that. Maybe it's what he was waiting for you to say - I accept you as you are now. I want you regardless of what comes with that. "I want you now," you say seriously.

 

He blinks, mouth curving into a smile, "You've got me, Sourwolf."

 

-

 

It's only six in the evening when you detach from Stiles' limbs to make something to eat for the both of you. It feels like the middle of night. Your internal clock is fucked up from sleeping all day.

 

Stiles follows you down the stairs, standing at the end of the landing while you make Breakfast for Dinner, something you only do once a month when it's been decided its your turn to contribute to the cooking rota. You can feel his eyes on you as you put bacon on the griddle, scrambling eggs with your other hand.

 

"What?" you ask without turning. When he doesn't say anything, you do turn around, cheesy eggy spatula in hand. "Something on my face?"

 

Siltes laughs, shaking his head, "You are just ridiculously attractive when you're like this. Open. Unguarded."

 

Your empty, hungry stomach feels suddenly bloated with warmth. "You are too," you say seriously, feeling the back of your neck prickle. Stiles rolls his eyes.

 

"We've already agreed I'm going to put out, there's no need to try and flatter me with lies," he snorts, opening the fridge to pull out orange juice. You pull him upright, minding his head with your hand on his elbow.

 

"Stiles," you say slowly, "I wasn't lying. You can listen in," you motion to your heart as it beats steadily, all truth. "I think you're attractive. I could barely keep myself away from you when you were in high school. I thought I was losing my fucking mind."

 

He looks at you like you've grown a second head. "That was high school. Now I look - "

 

" - like you've survived. You look like you're an Alpha, and you look like you belong here. What else matters? I could care less about biceps or scars."

 

He blinks at you owlishly, his pupils large and dark. You feel like you've said more than you actually wanted to, that you've implied more to Stiles about how you feel about him than you'd really like at this point.

 

"I can't believe I'm talking to the same Derek Hale. You just gave me a 'it's the personality the counts' speech. I think I might die from shock."

 

You roll your eyes but feel better that Stiles is teasing you. He grins, looking up at you through his long eyelashes, the scar on his cheek disfiguring that side of his face. You reach over and smooth it out with your fingers and he watches your hand move about his cheek.

 

"Set the table before you die from shock, why don't you," you say, and he chuckles as you flip the bacon, scrapping and turning the eggs about.

 

"I knew grumpy wolf was in there somewhere," he says, but when you glare at him, all he does is smile in return.

 

-

 

You know not to expect anyone until the next morning, so after you both eat an obscene amount of food between you, Stiles pulls you into the living room where you both curl up and watch It's A Wonderful Life.

 

It used to be your mother's favorite movie, and every year she would sit with your father in their bedroom and cry when it ended. You never understood why it upset her so much as a child - why your mother was crying and also happy at the same time.

 

Stiles plays with your hands as the movie unfolds, borrowed beneath Isaac's quilt that resides on the back of the couch. He smells like you, and pancakes, and like Pack, and you feel that if anything, this is exactly what you wanted without knowing how to ask for it.

 

"This was my dad's favorite movie after Elf and the Miracle on 34th Street," Stiles says, "I haven't let myself think about him for a long time. I miss him."

 

"We should go see him," you say softly, "wish him Merry Christmas."

 

Stiles eyes the snow wearily outside and then looks to you. "Okay. Lets do that."

 

He looks like a bright orange marshmellow by the time he comes thumping down the stairs, ungraceful in heavy snow boots. He smells like Boyd's puffer jacket and Scott's biggest wool scarf, wrapped around him several times until it eclipses his chin and mouth. The hat on his head, still reeking of department store, is entirely his. He glares at you when you start to laugh.

 

"I hate snow," he glowers. You both go out and watch it fall around you on the front porch.

 

"The cemetery is just a mile that way," you point north, away from the blackened dregs of the first Hale house in the east or to the the west where Beacon Hill's ends. Stiles nods, his eyes fixed on where his foot lands in the deep snow. His arms point awkwardly erect and away from his body, too many layers for him to fold them into his coat pockets.

 

The twilight sky is reduced to a dull gray from the effervescent reflection of the snow, the trees tall white soldiers in the distance. The mixture of firs and evergreens are breathtaking, and the smell so, so sweet. Stiles follows behind you, his footfalls heavier, more human. Neither of you talk. It's peaceful. The quiet is almost therapeutic.

 

"I think I just saw a squirrel," Stiles says suddenly, looking vaguely surprised.

 

"You must not be as scary to them anymore," you note, and he smiles then, nice and easy. "You weren't ever scary to me."

 

"Lies, all lies," Stiles says flippantly, but when you turn back to shoot him a look, he's still smiling.

 

"Can you tell when I'm lying?"

 

He shrugs, "Not very much. You're very guarded, even now. Big bad Alpha slinking around in the shadows frowning and growing impressive beards. You make a terrible Leo."

 

You roll your eyes, "I don't slink. And I'm a Capricorn."

 

Stiles stops for a moment to look at you, meaning you stop too. "That... actually makes a lot of sense. I have no idea why I thought your birthday was in July."

 

"Me either," you shrug. You're just nearing the cemetery, pushing cold, wet brush out of your face into the clearing. "Should be more organized, Virgo."

 

Stiles scoffs, trying to keep up with you and failing in his heavy gear, "Show off."

 

It's funny, because you were the farthest thing from a show off growing up. Your brother Noah was second eldest, academically excellent and good at sports. He was a star student and star son and show off by nature. You never begrudged him this. He was the paternal one of out your siblings, less harsh than Laura, who had Alpha blood running in her veins since birth.

 

You were content with being book smart and shy and quiet. You clung to your mother the longest, slept in her bed the longest. You were never supposed to be the Alpha, never taught how to lead. Your mother was supposed to live a long time. But here you are.

 

Weaving through the gravestones proves a little trickier than getting there - the woods have been your home since birth. In contrast, the cemetery is usually somewhere you like to avoid.

 

Stiles finds the Sheriff's gravestone near the back of the plot, in a line with other Beacon Hills deputies. He is buried in front of Claudia Stilinski's grave. They passed within six years of each other; Stiles had still been a child. You look at him now and don't see that teenage boy. It would have been different if the Sheriff had lived and it would have been different if your parents had lived, and this is a game you can't play.

 

He sits down in the snow. Your hand grips his shoulder tightly for a moment, and his mittened one comes up to touch your fingers, your heart slowing when he does.

 

You pause for a moment before backing up and wandering a few graves down. You get a distinct image in your head of Stiles curled up around a thin woman on a bed. He looks young, younger than you remember him, his head nearly bald. The image disappears before you can truly grasp it - like a memory of a memory, but you feel a deep pit reopen in the bottom of your stomach, a raw, rare sadness you haven't allowed yourself to feel in years.

 

It's stopped snowing for a moment. It smells fresh and wet as you pass along your parent's gravestones, your sister's and brother's and aunt's and cousin's gravestones, but there are no bones here anymore. Those are all dust somewhere. You turn back, unable to go any farther.

 

Stiles is lying on his back in the snow when you find him, and wordlessly you lie next to him.

 

"I'm waiting for the day this feeling will go away," he says softly. He sounds small and boyish.

 

"I don't think it does," you return truthfully.

 

Stiles turns to you, a strange look on his face. He contemplates you for a moment, apathetic, the non-scarred cheek flushed from the cold where the blood has surfaced. You both lie there for an hour, for a long while, until your fingers are stiff and blue, until it is time for you to go home.

 

The moon is calling you back.

 

-


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from Black Flies by Ben Howard.  
> I have no idea what this is, but please heed the warnings.
> 
> Canon-compliant with season 3A, but all season 3 takes place after Stiles has left for school. There are explicit warnings in the notes at the end that contain spoilers. Please let me know if I haven't included a warning that needs to be included.
> 
> Many thanks to Natasha and Ashley, who read and re-read, who edited, who listened to me about this story.
> 
> This story is for Kathryn, who perseveres. You are so loved.

-

 

That morning you rise before all others.

 

The Pack had crept in late Christmas evening, Sam fussy and tired a floor below. You had listened to everything until the last person - Scott, carrying something that he dropped in the living room, from the sound of it - had come in. Stiles was curled around you, his large palm flat against your stomach, knees tucked on either side of your thigh.

 

Allison and Scott murmured to themselves until past two, then slowly quieted and drifted off. Boyd started to snore a room over. You stayed awake for a long time, until slices of morning started to bleed through the night sky, listening to those sleeping around you.

 

Peace. This must be peace.

 

It's only a few hours later before you rise again. Stiles is a shadow carved into the mattress, only the small hints of his scent left for you to decipher he was there at all last night. The kiss felt like a dream. The thrumming, powerful hook in your stomach held something more powerful, more real. It did happen.

 

Your feet tingle as you make your way down the stairs. You find Stiles standing outside on the back porch, wearing Boyd's orange puffy jacket again. You find yourself smiling as you bound up behind him, a hand between his shoulder blades.

 

"Morning," he says quietly, eyes looking out into the trees. You scan them briefly for movement, deer, or rabbit, but nothing blips on your radar. He smiles when your lips reach his temple - as if your body has its own agenda - and looks down at his hands. "I can smell your tiredness."

 

"It's hard to sleep when I'm happy," you saw honestly, and Stiles looks at you then, his brows drawn up in what you think is worry - until you see his mouth curve into a real, full-fledged smile. Up close, it's crooked and a little feral, but nonetheless illuminating.

 

"I think I want to be part of your Pack," Stiles says a moment later, hand coming up to touch the side of your neck. "I haven't - not just because of now. I've been thinking about it a lot. Before Christmas."

 

You swallow, your heart capitulating against your ribcage, blood pounding in your ears. The wolf inside you is nearly yipping in joy, the smell of another Pack member, of Stiles being Pack, of hearing his heart in your head, of becoming a brother to Erica and Boyd and Scott and Isaac and Cora, seeing him and Allison in the kitchen and thinking home, seeing him with you, united, together; the same blood.

 

"Derek," he says your name slowly, confusion written on his face plainly, "It doesn't make me feel so confident when you don't say anything, dude."

 

"I - sorry," you say, cringing at the awkward stilt to your voice. “You were Pack before.”

 

Stiles nods, “As a teenager. Yeah. But this is different, isn’t it?”

 

“You’d have to give up your status,” you word carefully.

 

He gives you a strange, wry smile, “I know. I’ve told you a million times. I don’t want to be an Alpha. I hate it,” he grits his teeth, “Never needed any of this fucking power.”

 

There’s something about the grind of enamel against enamel, the tenderness of his eyes, his rueful, sad, smile. It reminds you of tall trees. An image of Stiles running, his coat reflecting off the sun, flecks of gold and yellow shining brightly enters your memory, though it seems unfamiliar. You feel suddenly as if you are watching yourself, before the moment breaks.

 

“The Pack thinks you’re family. It’s about time you’re one of us,” you settle on finally.

 

Stiles grins. He nods to himself, knocking on the porch railing, “Okay,” he says, glancing at you for a moment before staring back out into the trees. Something seems to have quieted inside of him, “Let’s run.”

 

You run like there is glee on yours heels. The snow is already melting into small piles of mush, a brittle breeze wafting through the trees and chilling your nose. Stiles splashes you when he lands in wet, slushy puddles – playful. He’s baiting you, jumping out of your reach every time you get close enough to get your jaws around his neck. Fast and thin, you can practically see him weave through trees like his backbone doesn’t exist. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was a born wolf, not bitten. He moves around in this skin like he grew up learning.

 

The feeling in the pit of your stomach is squeamish and distracting and too warm. It’s pride.

 

Stiles wears himself out as you both run farther and farther into the preserve, the common smells of the woods and the Hale property becoming more distant than before. You finally find your moment, rearing up behind a dead log before pouncing on his neck.

 

He tries to buck you off, rolling and barking down a small hill of shrub and rocks before splashing loudly into a creek. Stiles throws you for good and you land on your feet, shaking out of your coat. It feels good, the cold creek water.

 

When you look over, he’s several sizes smaller as his human form as he lies in the creek bed, water rushing over his naked skin. He looks pearlescent and wet and smells like moss when you lope over to stand by him. You feel his hand come up to touch your snout, the spot underneath one of your eyes.

 

“Shift,” he murmurs quietly, and you do. You lie next to him, feeling out of control and completely put together at the same time. Your cheek finds his shoulder and you rub the skin on his flat belly, pushing beads of water from his navel. He turns to look at you, a smile on his face.

 

He leans down as you lean up to cover his mouth with yours, you can taste his teeth, his wet tongue, the salt on his skin, the fresh water, the trees, the air; you can taste the small slivers on sun that marked his skin this morning.

 

His hands grapple for your shoulders, heaving you up to his level and pulling you on top of him; the shock of skin on skin feels tantalizing and overwhelming. Stiles is hard and pressing up against your thigh, and he feels so warm for once, almost too hot to touch against the cold of the water. Your mouth is against his, and then his collarbone, and the small pebbled goose bumps on his chest, down to the scar above his nipple. He tastes like salt and sleep. He tastes like home. It does not feel like guilt. It does not feel illicit.  This is new. This is all new.

 

“I just – I want,” Stiles breathes in your cheek, hips rolling into yours, “I just want to – yes,” he groans when you lick your palm and start to stroke him downwards from tip to shaft. His eyes flutter close and you split your time between watching the flicker of the gold and red in his eyes and your hand on his dick.

 

“Stiles,” you breath, afraid to say anything more – you’ve never been taught how to ask for anything before, when your dick hangs heavy between your legs – but perhaps Stiles would understand, perhaps he would know how to –

 

He knocks your hand, his other palm coming to cup your hip, spreading soggy dirt on your skin as he brings your closer. He smells intoxicating sweet, fresh rain and fresh woods when you nose as the column of his neck. His intentions to you aren’t clear until he wraps his long hand around both your cocks, his knuckles bumping into your stomach as he brings you off. The muscles in your lower back spasm, the skin on your knees rubbing raw as you try to keep balance on the rocks and dirt.

 

Blood has flushed Stiles’ cheeks, his lips parted and mere inches from yours when he comes – your orgasm hits you once the smell of him does and you feel your come on his stomach, his hand, your hip. Your legs give out and you collapse on top of him for a moment despite his muffled protest.

 

“I just fulfilled like ten fantasies from high school,” Stiles laughs and you growl low in your throat. He rolls you off of him and you land with a splash in the mud, water filling your nostrils for a moment. You blink the dirt out of your eyes to find he’s leaning over you, a grin curling around the corners of his mouth.

 

“What,” you muster flatly, trying not to betray the quiver in the back of your throat. Your toes are still tingling a little.

 

“Nothing,” Stiles laughs, “Just that you’ve got moss in your hair,” he pulls out a piece of green and throws it behind both of you.

 

“Stiles,” you murmur, sitting up. His eyes are fixated on your mouth before he looks up.

 

“Yeah,” he says quietly, waiting.

 

A beat passes, and then you push him into the water suddenly, jolting to your feet.

 

“Race you back!” you say behind your shoulder as he sputters. You hear him curse and rise from the waters like some kind of sun king, the golden haze on his skin like a beacon of light against the melted, dark snow and the blue of water. Half wolf, half man, he growls loud enough for the whole forest to hear. Soon he is at your heels, and you can barely keep the smile off your face the whole way home.

 

-

 

This is how it goes. You dream of your sister one night with Stiles plastered to your back, bare skin sticking slightly with sweat. You fell asleep running your fingers over the moles on his arms. In the dream, Laura is younger and more beautiful than you remember. She’s sitting in your mother’s kitchen with her long auburn hair down to her elbows, teeth wide and straight and her jaw hard, commanding. Your sister, the Alpha.

 

“It’s about time,” she teases, laughing, and when you look down you feel the horror start to unravel. She’s standing in ashes. “It’s about time.”

 

Stiles is the one who wakes you up, murmuring into your collar bone, rolling you over like a some sort of wounded animal. You can feel his dick nestled in the cleft of your ass. He’s soft – hell, he’s barely coherent, but it’s intimate, somehow, his mouth on the nape of your neck like he’s some sort of Pack mother. Neither of you bring up the nightmare the next morning. This is how it goes.

 

The Pack catches on. Erica before anyone, elbowing Stiles on New Year’s Eve, a paper crown on his head; they’re all on the porch to watch the firework show Boyd has rigged up. You stand and see from the kitchen window, hands deep in dinner dishes. You watch as Erica elbows Stiles, smiling and curling in closer to him.

 

“You fucking our Alpha, Batman?” she teases, and Stiles smiles down at her, indulging, holding her closer. She wraps her arms around him, hand rubbing down in his back in such a manner that makes you think he must be cold.

 

“Maybe,” he says a minute later, his voice warm and happy, “Does that mean Derek is Robin?”

 

Stiles has no baby fat and he’s underweight, his knees knock together, he looks like he may be a teenager forever if it weren’t for the sharp lines of his face, the raw maturity in his eyes. The wolf in him means he has sinewy, strong muscles that appear like cords of rope underneath his skin. He has a scar running over the length of his left hipbone, one to match just below his navel. He’s pale enough to be made entirely of moonlight when he crawls into your bed.

 

He kisses like he might kill you, but the way he looks at you is even worse – seeing things inside your brain that you don’t want to see. You are the woods. He is finding things you can’t. He is searching, in the way that his hands grapple at your shoulders, his toes curl underneath yours, the smell of his sweat on your skin, the feel of his hair between your fingers. The blood under his cheeks, always rising to greet your touch, or finding his eyes on you from across the room – you are hot like burning. He is hot like sun. Jesus, this boy. This wolf.

 

You overhear Scott and Allison talking with Stiles in the kitchen one morning, Isaac in the back bathroom bathing Sam. She’s fussy this morning, but Isaac does well with her like this – soothing, coaxing, his voice endless like a long sweet song.

 

“You and Derek?” Scott broaches. You can hear Stiles sigh from where you’re standing at the top of the staircase.

 

“Don’t act surprised. We were – well there was something there between us when I was in school,” Stiles says, sounding tired. You can hear him take a drink of something, and then put it down.

 

“Not surprised, Stiles,” Allison’s soft voice comes through. There’s a scrap of a chair and she sits down. “Scott didn’t mean it like that. Derek’s -.”

 

“He’s the Alpha,” Scott interrupts. “You’re an Alpha.”

 

“Yes, Scott, I’m aware,” Stiles drawls, “Is there a point you’re trying to make?”

 

“You’re not our Alpha, though. So how would that work?” he asks. “You’re my best friend, Stiles. We want to keep you around. I don’t think I could handle Derek fucking up and losing you. Again.”

 

“The first time wasn’t directly Derek’s fault,” Stiles says softly, “I don’t want to make it a popular myth that it was. I just…Derek looks at me like I’m not some sort of PTSD mutant,” he settles on finally. “Not that you all do – no one does and for that I’m eternally grateful. But he understands. He’s been through hell and back. He gets it.”

 

“Okay,” Scott mutters finally. He stands up, grabbing his keys and kissing Allison on the cheek. “I’m happy with that answer for now. But that’s seriously the last I ever want to hear about you and Derek forever. Ever and forever.”

 

“Make no promises to that,” Stiles throws out, but his tone is playful, and you can tell he’s lying by the strange twinge in his heart. “I’ve got to get you back for all the times you overshared in high school, afterall.”

 

“You overshared? About me? Or Isaac?” Allison asks curiously, her tone light. This is about the time you decide to come down the stairs, your hair still wet from your early shower. Stiles shoots you a look, rolling his eyes when Scott hurries out to his car without answering anymore of Allison’s questions.

 

“Thanks for listening in,” Stiles whispers, patting you on the shoulder before disappearing in the backyard. You at least have the decency to look sheepish.

 

So this is how it goes. The Christmas bleeds out of everyone, exhausted from all the bustle of holidays. You run, but now it’s only sometimes full shift and sometimes beta shift and sometimes it’s human. Stiles seems to enjoy everything most when he’s running, or when he’s out of breath, when life is too blurred and he’s too distracted to think or reflect on anything. His smiles come often and easy, he’s more graceful. It’s a nice thing to see.

 

The full moon is approaching again, and you and the Pack have plans to run some of the redwood territory. The odd spread of wildfires in Colorado, Nevada, Utah and the Tahoe area of California have quieted down for a week now, and you’re eager to run farther into the woods.

 

Two days into the New Year the sun blooms, bright and stark against winter sky. Stiles walks down from your bedroom that morning and to the East side of the property to greet it. He is bathed in gold and red light from the blistered sky, his eyes flickering a dark reddish gold when he gestures you to join him.

 

It all started with the boy in the red hoodie one night in the woods. It all started with the big, bad wolf.

 

And now.

 

-

 

Your birthday surprises you after the first week of January passes. Cora is leaning on the railing on the front porch that morning when you and Stiles comes bounding up the front steps. She flashes her eyes at Stiles in a playful way, before flinging herself on your back and curling her legs around your torso.

 

“Happy birthday, big brother. You’re officially an old, grumpy fart,” she cheers. Even though you’ve reminded her one million and a half times that thirty is not old, she is relentless with it. You can hear Stiles laughing behind you and you turn around to glare at him. Cora doesn’t need any more encouragement.

 

Isaac is at the kitchen table feeding Sam her morning bottle. He looks up at you and smiles, despite being covered in baby spit up and drool. “Happy birthday,” he says, grunting when Erica ruffles his hair as she passes him.

 

Erica’s wearing the sweater you got her for Christmas, her hair braided like Cora’s. “You’re finally thirty, Sourwolf. Time to start acting like a sour old man. Oh, wait,” she rolls her eyes and pats your cheek. She sits down at the table with a folder full of paperwork. “I’m only here for Allison’s birthday breakfast.”

 

As if you were accusing her.

 

Cora slides off your back and sits down next to Isaac, watching as he feeds Sam. Allison brings a giant plate of bacon in and plops in the center of the table. She smiles brightly, though she looks tired. “Happy birthday!”

 

It’s nice. Allison makes a cake for breakfast which all of you eat too much of, and Boyd gives you a nice pair of leather gloves for riding your motorcycle. Cora tacks herself at the end of that gift with a “From your sister too!” and Boyd doesn’t object, eyes darting over to Cora’s place at the table. She gives him an obnoxious smile in return.

 

Cora slipped a box full of pictures of your mother and her sisters and brothers under your door the night before that she had gotten from your distant aunt up in Seattle. Stiles had found them and passed them wordlessly over to you to skim through. You only touched the very corners of them, not to smudge any part. They only smelt like old photography paper and ancient ink, and not much else. Your mother had been a pretty girl, and a beautiful woman.

 

It’s because of this gift that you pointedly ignore the flirting going on between Boyd and your sister at the table, instead shoveling more birthday cake into your mouth and halfheartedly listen to Scott and Stiles talk about people they used to go to high school with. Nostalgia is strange smell on Stiles, whereas it is a constant for Scott.

 

Stiles is waiting for you, leaning on your motorcycle in scuffed Chuck Taylors and a borrowed jean jacket with his arms folded over his chest. He’s holding your new leather gloves. You set the recycling on the porch and stare at him from across the driveway. He raises a brow.

 

“I’ve never been on one of these things,” he says when you gun the engine, his front a warm solid comfort against the broad expanse of your back. This doesn’t surprise you. You can’t really picture Stiles on a motorcycle, riding around and donning a leather jacket.

 

You ride farther out of Beacon Hills than you’ve been in a long, long time. The houses get fewer and farther in between until it’s just tall trees and highway and clouds, so damp and oxygenated you can help but take a deep breath every few seconds.

 

Stiles’ joy is tangible as he holds onto your waist, and when you sneak a glance behind your shoulder you find that he’s got his head tipped back so just his Adam’s apple is exposed. His mouth is slightly open. He’s listening to the breeze, to the forest. You close your eyes for a moment, too. Six years ago closing your eyes while on a highway was your way of giving up – a split second moment of suicidal desperation. Six years ago was a lot different. This is now.

 

“Fucking amazing,” Stiles murmurs later on down the road, his mouth next to your ear. Then he rears back and wolf calls, long and sweet, and you can’t help but laugh.

 

-

 

Erica is in the greenhouse. She catches you going up the back porch with Stiles and beckons to back towards the south end of the property, past the trellis and her raised vegetable beds, still covered for the winter. Stiles claps your shoulders before disappearing inside. Erica smiles one of her smiles that always make you a little uneasy.

 

“Getting ready for the new planting season?” you ask for lack of anything else to say. Erica turns around from where she’s organizing clay pots in order by size. She looks unimpressed by your attempt.

 

“I’m going to talk about something you don’t want to talk about,” she says and you roll your eyes.

 

“Then let’s not talk about it,” you interrupt her shortly.

 

She laughs, but it’s the kind of laugh that makes you feel like you’re a child again. “Scott thinks it’s a good idea that Stiles is going to become Pack.”

 

You snort derisively, “And how painful was it for him to admit that?”

 

She smiles despite herself, “But he thinks it’s a bad idea if Stiles is going to become Pack just to become your mate.”

 

You feel yourself frown, “Scott thinks I’d be a bad mate to Stiles,” you say flatly, feeling your hackles rise. “He doesn’t –”

 

But Erica shakes her head. “No. The opposite. Stiles is still recovering. He’s depressed and a little reckless. The other day he ran for most of a day without stopping or eating just so he could sleep for an hour,” Erica points out, her face screwed up, “He’s still in survival mode, Derek. I love that boy more than anything in the world, but Scott might be right. If you bond with him, it could take a serious toll on you – and make us vulnerable.”

 

You grit your teeth, looking down at your feet. Erica goes on, “I love that boy. I do. I would not trade him for anything. He’s not done a damn thing wrong. But Scott is your second for a reason. He just wants you to think it through.”

 

“We haven’t had a serious threat since the Alpha Pack. It was over three years ago that we ran those Omegas out of town, and that took an barely half a day.”

 

Erica pushes the wisps of her braid out of her face. “I know. But what of the people Stiles’ speaks of, the rumors your sister has heard? Haven’t you given them any thought?”

 

You have. More and more frequently you’ve been having nightmares of a dark tunnel with flickering fluorescent lights that hurt to look at directly. It smells like mold and death, of grotesque feces and urine and blood. Sometimes you see people in blue coats walking around; sometimes you are tortured on a wire rack. The sound of electricity crackles in your ears You always wake up in a terrified, cold sweat.

 

“We’ve grown into a strong Pack. We have people to protect, and now children,” Erica goes on softly, her hand reaching over to thread with yours. “Stiles is our family, he is practically Pack. I’m just worried,” she sighs, “The earth doesn’t feel right.”

 

-

 

Scott is in the kitchen reeking of tension and red in the face. Isaac is hovering nervously in the back hallway and Boyd looks uncomfortable.

 

Stiles doesn’t emerge from his room all evening.

 

-

 

It’s the first morning in a long time that you aren’t woken up by Stiles for a run. Down in the kitchen, only Scott is sitting at the table. Allison decided to return to Happy House a few weeks early. Between her, Isaac and Scott, Sam is well fed, well entertained, and clean.

 

“It’s not full time,” she had said, “Probably won’t be until she’s in school. But maybe a few hours a week, just to check in.”

 

It seems Cora has taken Stiles’ job full time. She too has problems being snarky to customers, but probably for different reasons. When you told her that she didn’t need the job, that there were plenty of funds from generations of investments, properties ownerships, and even the life insurance money since the fire – which you have always considered blood money – that she wouldn’t need to work. But your sister refused.

 

“I could say the same to you, with all your shareholdings and side business. Boyd told me you do the town’s taxes, too,” she had said, and then stared you down from behind What to Expect When You’re Expecting until you left her alone.

 

You come to stop on the other side of the table, facing Scott.

 

“You didn’t have any right telling him whatever you told him,” you say shortly. Scott glances up from his phone, a stern look on his face.

 

“I didn’t - ,” he says, his voice raised. He takes a deep breath. “I was just worried. I don’t know. When I came home the other night, he smelt just like you. Being Bonded is a lot of work and – “

 

“I know what being Bonded is like. My parents were Bonded. My uncles and aunts. Peter. My brother,” you snarl, smacking your hand flat on the table. “It was out of line. You should have talked to me first. It’s not your business.”

 

“It is, though. It is. Stiles should join our Pack. Whatever relationship you two have – he shouldn’t join just to be your mate,” Scott protests. He rubs his forehead. You feel your face grow hot, your teeth set. You want to seethe.

 

“What has made you worried about having a weak spot in this Pack? And why the hell would you think Stiles would be it? He makes a good wolf. He’s nearly faster than Isaac, just as strong as you or Erica. I don’t understand.”

 

“Deaton told me that he’s heard rumors of hunters attacking Packs in Wyoming and Colorado. Taking out entire Packs. Family. Children. Everyone dead. He started looking into it – these were peaceful families, Derek. The Mason’s. Devon and her Pack. There was no record of them spilling human blood,” he recites worriedly, and then he narrows his eyes, his voice dropping, “The way they kill. It sounds like the stories Stiles has told me. The rumors Cora has heard.”

 

“Why wasn’t I immediately informed of this?” you growl, low in your throat.

 

“He just told me yesterday.”

 

“Then you should have told me yesterday,” you ground out. You feel the swirling dread creeping low in your gut. You vaguely remember Devon and her family from when you were a child. She had a rich southern drawl before they had relocated somewhere more peaceful than Louisiana. Whether or not they found that peace, you would never know.

 

Scott puts his hands up in submission. “I know. I’m sorry.”

 

You rub your hands over your face, left temple now starting to throb. You sit down across from, a feeling you had long forgotten flooding your gut. Fear of the unknown.

 

“I know Allison and I aren’t Bonded. She’s not a wolf. But Isaac and I…after the Nemeton, I took on what they felt, who they are. Sometimes Allison’s grief, or the night terrors that still bother Isaac...I feel those too,” he ends sadly. “Stiles has been my brother my whole life. I didn’t…”

 

“It wasn’t your place,” you say quietly. You stand up, pushing your chair in and leaving Scott to dwell alone in the kitchen.

 

-

 

It’s the first time since Stiles arrived last fall that you’ve smelt another wolf around. You leap from your spot on the living room couch, scenting the air. It’s a foreign wolf – but not an Alpha. They don’t smell foreign like Stiles, like blatant stupid power, but earthy, and spicy, like tea and soil.

 

You step outside on the front porch, Scott behind you. Through a clearing from the trees to the East a wolf darts out in beta form, her face covered in places with dark hair and large, flickering gold eyes. She shifts, instead taking on the form of a very pretty girl with dark hair and dark skin. You don’t recognize her distinctly – not from the dark kohl that lines her eyes, nor the masses of curly tresses that measures nearly down to the waist, or the faded henna on her hands and wrists. She seems familiar, though.

 

She bends her neck, hands up in a gesture of peace. You nod in acceptance, but neither you nor Scott move off the porch.

 

“Alpha Hale, I am here as a messenger for Alpha Patel of the Patel Pack in Portland,” she says, her voice loud and eloquent. All her words are pointed and articulate. You note that she has immense control with her shift – as her eyes are still bright Beta gold.

 

After a second, you invite her into the house. Pass the main hallway and straight through to the large kitchen table. Erica is sitting at the table with spreadsheets, and she looks up, waving politely.

 

“My name is Anisha – I am Patricia’s step-daughter. Thank you for having me inside your home,” she smiles politely, waiting for you to sit first before she does at the table. Erica slides her work over, but you can tell she’s given up on it, instead opting to listen to whatever Anisha has to say.

 

This wolf, though youthful, is probably a Pack liaison for the Patricia, someone who has studied how to deal with negotiation and power plays not only with other wolves but in the human world, too. But this doesn’t seem like a power play, and she doesn’t seem to mind or notice that your Pack is less mannered, more rustic, perhaps more feral than she is used to with urban wolves.

 

“Patricia knew my mother Talia,” you say as way of introduction. “I’m Derek. This is my second, Scott, and my Beta Erica. What information or news has she sought to bring me?”

 

“The LaCrow Pack in Bellingham has been completely wiped out. My brother Nathanial found a mass grave near the Canadian border, and our Pack alliances with those in Idaho and Utah have told me that the murders of this Pack are similar to the murders of other Packs in the Midwest,” her voice doesn’t waver, but you can tell she seems shaken by the news of a Pack being massacred so close to her own Pack.

 

You don’t blame her – it had been quiet as far as you had known for a few weeks now. You would know. You were counting until it was okay to bring up Stiles joining the Pack again. Tapering off the Bond once it had already started to grow was not pleasant or easy. You can feel the tension start to spread in your shoulders, and hope to God this isn’t another shitstorm waiting to happen.

 

“We want – we heard rumors of a group of hunters that are different from all other’s we’ve ever known. Different from the Kennedy Rogues or the Argents. There is no code, and no survivors. The wolves that we’ve found – that are being found, have been experimented on, tortured…It’s like werewolf genocide,” she explains, her face screwed up, and you feel yourself hanging on her every word as she explains the very fears you have been dreading. This feels slightly like the inside of one of your nightmares. But it’s not. It’s real. “So far, there have been no survivors, or they’ve died before we could help them.”

 

“Is there any pattern in which Packs are being hunted? Any commonalities?” Scott asks, hands folding in front of him. He’s still wearing the scrubs from his shift at the vet office.

 

But Anisha shakes her head. “Seems random. We’ve started to correspond with several Packs around the Midwest, which is shown to be the main hunting ground, and they’re – we’re all getting nervous. Devon’s Pack was old, and had been strong for generation. Almost as old as the Hales.”

 

Her eyes flicker down, a slightly flush covering her cheeks. “Sorry,” she says meekly, but you wave a hand to excuse it.

 

Finally Anisha looks up to with naked, brazen truth upon her face – this is the real reason she came to visit your Pack specifically, whatever is about to come out of her mouth. “There have been rumors of those who have survived these hunters. Rumors of a wolf staying with a Pack in northern California.”

 

Scott crosses his arms over his chest, a frown cover his face and replacing his usual demeanor of patience and understanding. He looks more like a wolf when he frowns, when he’s serious, at least to you. Naturally, this is something Scott would like to avoid. You can feel the tick in your jaw start to act up again, and Erica is tense, frozen at the end of the table, her blonde ringlets spilling over her paperwork such a start contrast to the intensity of her face that it’s nearly laughable.

 

“Where have these rumors circulated from?” you ask, somewhat tersely. The idea of Stiles’ location never seemed like a secret to you, except now that it’s brought to your attention you want to fiercely protect his whereabouts from everyone.

 

Anisha doesn’t look phased by the change in body language of your Betas. This instead seems to fuel her belief that the rumor of this wolf – of Stiles – is in fact true. Her body points towards you now, hips and shoulders lining up against the table, hands coming out to touch the wood in an eager manner. It says a lot more than her indifferent, diplomatic pose from before. Eager. Scared.

 

“There’s been talk of an Alpha separated from it’s Pack who glows red like there is fire in high up in his heart,” she describes, “The story goes that he escaped from a fire that destroyed the underground werewolf barracks where they were training them to be weapons of mass destruction – some neo-nazi bullshit like that, and that before the entire place went down he took something from one of those batshit crazy blood hunters – or whatever they are – and they’ve been looking for him ever since. Still looking for any of the wolves that survived the fire.”

 

You try to digest this information. Stiles never mentioned – Stiles never mentioned that anyone was specifically after him. You can hear his voice distinctly in your head saying this is why you have to tell me things, Derek. We need to be honest.

 

Perhaps this explains his paranoia about visitors, and almost attacking Cora, quitting the job Allison gave him. Perhaps it’s just who he is now, because Stiles doesn’t have to be honest to you, isn’t bound to you in that way, and can play you like a fucking deck of cards –

 

“It’s not a rumor anymore,” Anisha says coyly, lying her last piece of information down, “Not to me, not to Patricia anymore. We found two wolves near the border when my brother was up there. Two wolves who say they belong in his old Pack.”

 

“Have you checked if they’re lying?” Scott says, narrowing his eyes. “Checked they aren’t omegas?”

 

“Of course we have,” Anisha scoffs, rightly offended that Scott would insinuate her Pack isn’t competent. “Both Betas, both clean heartbeats. Both saying they’re looking for a wolf with scars all over his body, who ran to somewhere near the Redwood territory. One of them says he’s even from Beacon Hills.”

 

You feel yourself sit up straighter, spine like a rod of hot iron.

 

“Why didn’t they come down here  immediately then to see if he was here – especially if there is a wolf from Beacon Hills, we may have been able to offer protection,” you ask, but the politeness in your voice is slipping as more gruff impatience invades. You’re not used to dealing with wolves outside your Pack. It isn’t your strong point.

 

Anisha’s expression turns softer now, “One of them is sick. Really sick. We couldn’t risk moving him down here. We thought if he was reunited with his Alpha it would help. He said his Alpha was the Alpha we were already looking for to help us if we were going to be the next Pack to be attacked, and so I was sent,” she sighs now, arms folded against the table. “Look, this is a formal request for help. We know he’s not initiated in your Pack, if he is still in this area at all. We don’t want the death of a sick Beta on our hands.”

 

“We understand that, and we appreciate your concern,” Scott says, more kindly than you could muster. “Can we have the names of the Beta’s?”

 

Anisha hesitates, looking between you, Scott, and lastly to Erica, who has remained silent this entire time, but no less lethal looking. Finally she says, very deliberately, “A wolf named Ethan, and a wolf named Jack. Jack is the one who is sick.”

 

“Don’t know a Jack from Beacon Hills, do we,” Erica speaks for the first time, and you cringe at how lethal her voice sounds from underneath the saccharine sweetness of her tone. Anisha glances at her for a moment, but you can tell she doesn’t want to take her eyes off you for too long.

 

“He says he knows the wolf from the camps they were kept in. Insists. He’s a bit – abrasive. So I was sent,” she says directly to you now. The worry of defeat and rejection are starting to wear on her face, and the increase of heartbeat means her eyes are starting to flicker towards the door.

 

“The safety of my Pack comes first,” you say calmly, eyes purposely staying they’re normal color. “And I’m sure you know, being a Hale, I don’t like rumors, especially when they come to my door.”

 

Anisha at least has the audacity to bow her head, her face flushing slightly. “Of course. I’ll relay that to Alpha Patel. You just – we’re just nervous. This wolf has become somewhat a beacon of hope. If these hunters come farther south, there’s only three Packs between Bellingham and Tahoe – and including us, and including you. That’s not good odds.”

 

The front door slams before you’re able to answer, and you first hear the sharp clap of Allison’s keys, coupled with Cora’s softer growl, but it’s the tight coiling muscle spasm behind your navel that makes you stand up, spooking Anisha farther back into her chair in retaliation. She doesn’t rise too, though. She knows she’s in your home, and you’re the Alpha.

 

Stiles comes bounding into the dining room, his face shifted completely in beta form. It’s almost like you’re moving in slow motion when you thrust your arm out in front of him, slamming him back into the ground as he moves to lunge at Anisha. Scott hurries to usher Allison into the living room as Erica growls at Anisha, keeping her cornered to the wall.

 

You flash your eyes at Stiles, but he flashes his right back at you, equal in power. Where you have brute force, he has speed, and where you have Pack, he has family.

 

“She’s not a threat,” you growl, feeling yourself struggle to annunciate around your fangs. Stiles struggles for a moment, scars glowing bright red before he stills. Rolling his neck forward, his face has once against shifted. His eyes are burning through Anisha, red and angry and untrustworthy.

 

“This is Anisha of the Patel Pack in Portland, Oregon,” you say, hand waving between them. She’s watching Stiles with wide eyes – now no longer yellow, as a sign of submission – with both reverence and fear. This was the wolf she had heard about. This is the wolf she’s been looking for.

 

Stiles looks to you for more of answer, not wanting to speak. You resist the urge to cup the back of his neck and pull him close to you, push him behind you and protect him. It’s ridiculous and unnecessary, and strictly the Bond talking, because Stiles can take care of himself and he’s not – he’s not your mate. He’s not even Pack. You feel naked underneath Anisha’s studious, unabashed eye. She too, sees that Stiles is not your Pack.

 

Finally, you relent with a heavy sigh. You have this strange feeling of giving up something sacred by explain the situation to Stiles. Like you’re breaking some kind of sanctuary.

 

“Another Pack in Washington has been slaughtered. Her Alpha thinks it’s by the same group of people who ran the Underground,” you can feel Stiles seize up at the mention of the Underground, at the horrific realization that they are as nearby as Washington. It confirms his deepest fear that they didn’t – the scientists, the hunters – didn’t die in the fire like he so feverishly hoped. These emotions are quick like lightning and they pulsate somewhere near your heart like a warm bruise. You don’t know how to you know these things, but you do.

 

“I came looking for a wolf who survived the Underground,” Anisha’s voice has been reduced to something smaller, girlish rather than the full embodied voice that was ages older than she was.

 

“There could be more than one wolf to survive,” Erica intercepts, her teeth bared again. You feel Stiles fingers curl around your forearm and you look away from Anisha to find your arm still pressing him into the wall. You release him, hand lingering over his shoulder. He looks pale white and stiff, heart stuttering.

 

Anisha doesn’t look at Erica, instead keeping her eyes fixed on Stiles. “But there was one that was seen as a leader in those encampments. Someone who helped make that type of hell bearable,” she presses, her beating wildly in her chest. “He had a nickname. There’s a rumor they used to call him Superman.”

 

Stiles growls loudly, eyes crazed as he looks ready to pounce again. Your arms are out, ready for him to jump, but he doesn’t. Erica isn’t even looking at Anisha anymore, but Stiles. She is completely disbelief, mouth open in surprise.

 

“Did you come here just to remind me of things I’d rather forget?” Stiles nearly roars, eyes flashing at her. “Swap some bedtime stories? Let me promise you mine are going to keep you up at night.”

 

“No,” Anisha shakes her head, a mixture of disgust and sadness on her face. “Two Betas were found near the border when we went up to Bellingham. They said they were looking a wolf who had survived the Canadian encampments, and that he was in northern California. Wouldn’t give your name,” she hurries, “But one said he was ‘Superman’.”

 

“Why aren’t they here?” Stiles asks flatly. He’s not yelling, at least. You take a small step back. “If I’m truly their Alpha, they would have come here, not me.”

 

“One of them is injured. We’re not sure what happened to him – but we were scared to move him and risk not finding you at all. We’ve never had a wolf die on our hands,” her words are nearly tripping over themselves as she scrambles to explain. Anisha’s entire face is screwed up with worry. You feel slightly bad for her. But Jesus, what a luxury. The bones in your closet could fill a cemetery.

 

“So we followed the instinct of one of the wolves, who said you’d probably migrate back to this area.”

 

“Their names?” Stiles asks, jaw set. His arms are crossed over his chest, narrow eyes unwavering from the beta’s young round face. Objectively, even in this form, he’s a little terrifying.

 

“One is Ethan. The other is Jack. He is the one who is sick,” she says.

 

Stiles’ body language changes in a near instant as he sighs, hands coming up to cover his face. Scott pulls him into a half-embrace, hand soothing over the visible knobs of Stiles’ spine through his t shirt. You want to move, nearly feel your feet trip over themselves before you can help yourself, but you’ve already given away enough to this girl. It’s better to keep your distance until she leaves. There’s a very soft whine that rises in your throat. You have a scary suspicion that it isn’t your grievances this time, but Stiles’ own. You try to clamp down on the Bond, to sever yourself, but it only grows stronger the more you reject it.

 

“So you’re here to lead me back to them, is that it?” Stiles says dully, eyes rubbed raw. Then he looks at you, waving his hand with faux nonchalance, “Jack is Jackson. We used to shortened names Underground.”

 

Anisha nods slowly. He considers this for a moment, then says, “If this is a trap, I will kill you. I won’t even hesitate killing you. If there is even one part of this that isn’t the truth, or is slightly untruthful, I will kill you. You won’t be able to beat me, or catch me, or find me. Your Pack will never be safe from me ever again. I am telling you this so you will understand. I’m just trying to be understood,” he says clearly, brows drawn up as he speaks.

 

 

He sounds hard and unmovable, like the Stiles you first saw when he came back to you (all of you – not just you, but everyone) as an Alpha. Sometimes it’s still new.

 

Anisha nods again, though her anxiety is still written clear on her face. To her credit, you think, she has managed to hold her own in a room full of foreign wolves without offending any of your Betas or lashing out in defense. It’s impressive for a wolf her age.

 

Stiles seems to accept her honesty. “Okay. We leave at dawn.”

 

-

 

Anisha sleeps on the pull out couch in the living room. Allison brings her a plate for dinner and Isaac starts weaving a blanket on the living floor in front of the television, making idle conversation with her. You are a Pack full of standoffish, socially awkward wolves. You need those like Isaac and Allison to bridge the gap others cannot fathom doing. Scott is probably the most social of them all, in truth, but as your second, he is too close to you, and carries too much power, for her to be comfortable.

 

After a short conversation with her Alpha, she seemed to relax more. It’s a miniscule difference, as she still watches everyone in your Pack as they move about the house, probably just as much as they watch her, too. But it’s at least cordial. You don’t have guests often at this house. It’s not something anyone is used to.

 

You feel heavy and tired. Cora has retired to her bedroom early, probably because of the foreign wolf in the house. Even though a large part of her life was spent away from you, there are so many things you both share. Erica passes you on your way to your room, hand brushing your arm.

 

“Everything will be fine,” she whispers, nodding. She looks domestic in her bathrobe and house slippers, but she is anything but. You nod, feeling yourself sigh again. That’s as much of an response you’re able to give, and Erica knows this.

 

You have a horrible, horrible suspicion everything will be not be fine.

 

-

 

Stiles crawls into your bed three hours before dawn. He looks tired and wired at the same time, eyes so wide they might fall right out of his head. You can’t help but inhale when he comes closer, looming over you with his weight propped up by his arms on either side of your head. He smells good. He smells like you.

 

“I know we agreed we shouldn’t,” he whispers, knee coming up to slide between your parted legs. His warmth is rare and tantalizing, and you feel stupidly wanton. “But I need this tonight.”

 

You feel yourself nodding, and your skin prickles with that strange out of body experience. Stiles dips down to capture your mouth with his, and your arms come up to pull him down on top of you. His mouth is sloppy and dirty as he moves about your jaw, your lips, your collarbone. He even bites your ear, and you can’t get enough of any of it. You feel like fire, like losing, like home, like dying. It’s nothing you can describe.

 

“God, this is –” he breathes quietly into your ear as you bring his boxer shorts down with both your hands. Your palms skin over his hips, down his backside to cup the backs of his slender thighs until you can pull him higher up your body, his dick skimming against your belly gently. You palm the side of his face for a moment and he leans into it, looking down at you with the most serene, careful look.

 

The boy with amber eyes, lit up like some kind of Sun God, like some kind of know-it-all figment of your imagination. Stiles, the boy who became a thorn in your side just so he could get close to you, who managed to crawl under your skin with his weak human fingers. The boy who ran with wolves, now is one. This boy. You forget so easily he’s the same boy sometimes, but then again it’s like you can never not remember. This boy. You are so fucked. You are so, so fucked.

 

“You’re getting lost in there again,” he says quietly, a half smile on his face. You roll your eyes, moving your fingers over his eyelids and through his hair. Stiles places his hand over his heart. “Don’t worry. I can feel you here.”

 

Everything blurs after that. Stiles’ mouth on your skin is like an elixir and a poison. His eyes skim over your body as he bruises it with his mouth, touching the spots that disappear instantly with his thumb after. He brings you off with three fingers inside of you, stroking at a spot that makes your spine tingle right down to your toes before rutting against the jut of your hip as you suck on his tongue. You feel dazed as he cleans you up with a corner of the sheet before curling up beside you.

 

“I’ll be back before nightfall. I’m coming back. I’m coming back to you,” Stiles whispers, talking around a yawn, and you close your eyes, hand encased by his longer fingers. His mouth dances over the bruise on your chest, growing ever powerful as time passes, and this is the last thing you remember before you fall asleep.

 

-

 

You wake up alone.

 

-

 

The next day passes slowly. Scott starts making phone calls to the some of the local Pack allies you have formed over the past five or so years to inform them about the massacres. Erica, Boyd, Isaac, Cora, and Allison all have work, so you’re left alone in the house to wander. You have a ball of worry the size of your fist churning in your stomach, and you feel incredibly stupid that your appetite’s been shot, too. You want so badly to blame the Bond, but you’re scared that it isn’t the reason behind this.

 

Mostly you sit on the front porch, trying to look nonchalant but failing miserable when Cora comes home still wearing an apron and gives you a stern look. You are so completely pathetic that you don’t even return it with a glare of your own.

 

“You’re attached,” she says like she knew it all along, sitting down and grunting slightly beside you. “Brother, you are so fucked.”

 

“I don’t need your input, thanks,” you snarl, but this just fuels Cora further.

 

“I think you do, actually,” she says, “You need to figure out what the fuck you’re doing with this kid. Because if there really are these guys coming to gun us all down, and he’s the reason, then he’s just the same as the rest of your fucked up relationships.”

 

“He’s a victim, not a hunter,” you spit, staring down your sister. “He never had a choice.”

 

“And you? What about your choices? Or are you fine with being a pawn for anyone who comes along and says they love you?” she shakes her head, rubbing her eyes. “I just. I just don’t want you to end up dead.”

 

“I’m not going to,” you say tersely, feeling cornered. Your sister is good at find your worst spots to prod at until you’re a mess at her feet. But she’s not striking to hurt anymore. She’s trying to make you understand.

 

“You better not,” Cora pokes you in the chest. “I can’t bring a baby into this shithole of a world without my brother. I mean it.”

 

She glares at you one last time before shucking her apron and going inside with a slam of the front door. It’s the best I love you from Cora you’re probably going to get in the near future. It’s not her fault. You’ve fucked up a lot, and she’s suffered for it.

 

-

 

The Pack is good at making busy, but you can tell they’re all awaiting Stiles’ arrival that evening. He had just told you nightfall, but that could mean when it literally gets dark, which was an hour ago, or any time after dark – which – could be hours from now. It makes you uneasy. Your bruise blooms and retreats ever so often, and when the constant dull ache above your heart flickers it makes you nervous. Its consistency means that Stiles is out there, somewhere, and that he’s okay.

 

Allison looks at you when you put a stray coffee cup in the sink for washing later. “Should I set three extra plates?”

 

You’re unable to answer her. For some reason, this is incredibly embarrassing for you as an Alpha.

 

Finally, by midnight, you can’t take it anymore.

 

“I’m going to circle the land and part of the preserve. Blow off some energy,” you inform Isaac, who is the middle of a giant purple and gold blanket laid out on the dining table. He nods; an eyebrow raised, but doesn’t say anything in return.

 

The fresh air will do you good.

 

-

 

The fresh air, incidentally, does not do you any good.

 

This is the snide thought inside your head, which sounds worryingly like Cora when the second blow comes from behind. You roll on your back, already shifting, until an electric rod comes out from your left and hits your shoulder. Stinging with pain, you growl, rearing back your neck so you can howl for your Beta’s when another shock comes striking down, this time straight to your Adam’s apple. The pain hits, hard, and you try to scream in anger only to realize in horror that no sound exits your mouth.

 

From above come three hunters who look down at you with indifference on their faces. You don’t know them, and they don’t smell like anything you recognize – they don’t smell like anything at all. You grunt, trying to shift away, when one of them hits you again with the electric rod. Your growl at them, lower in the throat, your skin blistering and healing halfway. You ache, and you ache and you can’t sit up. The trees are giants as you stare up the little pockets of sky peeking through. You grunt, before the rod hits you again, this time against the temple, and you can’t blink away the black dots this time.

 

-

 

Again you awake. You come to your senses gradually, first pain, in your limbs, in the stinging pieces of singed off skin. Hearing comes next, the distinct sound of human muttering, of bullets rolling around in soil, of hair swaying down someone’s back. Then the burnt blood in your mouth and the beginnings of thirst you’re starting to feel. Your sight comes last. Maybe you should be grateful. As you groan to life, Lydia Martin is mere inches away from your face.

 

You try to move, but your hands are tied above your head with barbwire. You can’t feel your hands, so it must be laced with a strain of wolfsbane.

 

“Don’t make a sound,” she whispers, so quiet that even with super hearing you nearly have to strain to hear her. “Trust that I’m on your side.”

 

She then strikes you hard in the side, and then again until you hear a rib crack loudly in your ears. You are disoriented, confused, looking at the red swish of her hair as she strikes you again and again, until the whip bends back and breaks against the side of your thigh. Your head lolls to the side as you just try to breathe. In, out, in, out.

 

It’s not working. You can barely feel the bruise on your heart, the only intention wound you have, a reminder that Stiles is on his way towards home and you won’t be there and he won’t know where to look. Perhaps your trail is loud and clear, but most likely it is muddled with other scents and the rich, smothering smell of soil. You don’t know what state he’s in. Maybe he has found Jackson and the other Beta and brought them home and they’re all sitting around waiting for you to show up. Maybe he hasn’t found either of them and he’s been caught up with the Patel Pack. Maybe, maybe he’s been killed by these hunters.

 

You feel sick to your stomach. Another man comes up, leaning on Lydia and appraising her work on breaking all the bones in the left side of your body. Lydia stares at you with round, cruel eyes, and no sign of recognition apparent on her face.

 

“Good work catching the Alpha. His Pack is bound to come,” the man says. He’s wearing a gray pullover hoodie. You notice this because there is not one speck of dirt or any blood splatter on it. It’s strangely immaculate.

 

You glare at them, but it’s difficult to keep your eyes open. Your body is trying to heal itself, but it’s not healing efficiently enough and you pass out again before you truly regained consciousness.  

 

-

 

Again.

 

The moon is a sliver in the sky, barely enough pull to give you any power back. You sink against your restraints, trying to breathe. Twice you vomit, trying to puke to the side and not down your front. Sadly, you’re not successful. You’re not sure what time it is or even what part of the forest you’re in. With horror you find that your sense of smell has been nearly lost. All you can smell is blood.

 

A woman who is not Lydia comes up to you. So far you’ve counted seven hunters, including Lydia and Gray Hoodie, who have set up camp a small way away. They’re all poured over a map. She has long blond hair tied back, flat against her skull. She would be pretty if it were for the long scar running down her face from scalp to chin. One of her eyes is cloudy gray where the scar runs through.

 

“Late twenties to early thirties,” she murmurs to herself, make notes in a journal. She has a voice that reminds you a steel and the smell of hospitals. Clinical. Emotionless. “195 pounds, 6 foot 2 inches, dark brown hair, green eyes. Alpha for about three to eight years.”

 

You don’t say anything, watching her carefully. She seems not to notice your glare. Humans who are not intimidated by wolves are never good for you. But since when do you know what’s good for you.

 

She bends down to eye level with you, pocketing her notebook. “You’re a good looking wolf,” she says, and her hand reaches out to touch the dried blood on your face. “You’d make an excellent soldier for us.”

You feel your stomach turn. She smiles sweetly, like she’s talking about the weather or local news. This is normal for her. This is mundane.

 

You do not think of Kate Argent.

 

“Sad thing about that is,” she sighs with pretend sadness, like this is a terrible loss for her, “We can’t do that anymore. Someone ruined that for us.”

 

“So you’re taking out every Pack west of Chicago,” you grit, your throat sore and voice deep and dirty like a gutter.

 

“Figured you’d be smart. You’re an Alpha, after all,” she sighs. She stands up, going to examine your hands. You strain to look up at her, unable to escape as she pulls out a pair of pliers, extracting one of your claws from your fingers. You growl, feeling the white hot burning start to spread down your handle and into your arms.

 

She tsks quietly, knocking your bruised temple with her pliers. You grunt, an ache blooming on the side your face. “I like souvenirs,” she smiles again. You wait until she saunters back to camp, her steps deliberate and graceful before you vomit again.

 

-

 

It could be twenty minutes or it could be hours. The bruise on your heart is starting fade into the background. You feel yourself trying not to panic as it gets dimmer and dimmer, your sense becoming duller.

 

Another man, this one with gold rimmed glasses and some kind of tool kit comes down next to you. He smells like raw chicken and gasoline, but the smell is faint even though he’s right in front of you. He doesn’t look like the rogue hunters that usually come your way, rough and grotesque. He doesn’t look like the hunting families like the Argents either, polished and icy. He looks like he could be someone’s doctor. A pharmacist, really. A fucking pharmacist.

 

“Wish we could make you fight,” he says and his voice sounds like suede against your ears. You find it hard to keep your eyes open, even though you’re weary that he’s nearing closer to you. “But that’s okay. I enjoy this too.”

 

You watch as he pulls out a small blade, feeling yourself tense. He sets a vial down next to you with opaque liquid inside of it. Pharmacist man grips your jaw in his hands tightly to force you to look at him.

 

He sounds pleasant, southern to your ears. “Now, you’re going to sit real still while I do this, or I’m going to make you really regret it.”

 

He lets go of your jaw, letting it smack against your shoulder as your head bobs uselessly. You watch as he rolls the sleeve of your Henley up to your elbow, cleaning the skin with an alcohol wipe. You watch on as he makes work of cleaning your arm, black spots filtering your vision.

 

“This technique is a specialty of mine,” he says calmly. His voice reminds you of that guy who used to sell blenders and massage recliners on tv. He situates his knife with the flat edge down towards you skin. When he draws the first line, it stings, but it’s not nearly as painful as when the Blonde one took your fingernail, or Lydia ravaged your side with that whip. It’s almost dull.

 

“We’ve formulated this concoction to make it hard for wolves to shift. It helps control them. It also scars permanently, which makes it easy to single out our wolves from Rogues,” he explains easily. He’s holding open your wound with his fingers, and you watch as he grabs his small vial and holds it over your skin. It is smoking slightly from the open lip of the bottle. You start to squirm, trying to pull your arm away. Whatever that is, you don’t want it on you.

 

Pharmacy man grits his teeth, smacking you in the jaw with the blunt end of his knife hard enough that you see tiny spots again in your vision. A second later your arm feels like it’s going to shrivel up and fall off. It’s twitching and burning with such intensity, the smell of dead flesh flushing the inside your nose and making you cough.

 

By the time he’s finished making some kind of intricate pattern on your arm, you can barely keep your eyes open, the pain a hot, molten intensity that makes you feel like your arm has been set on fire. Passing out seems like the only option, and everything swirls together inside your brain as you succumb again to darkness.

 

It’s the first time you entertain the thought that you might not make it out of this.

 

-

 

“Good, he’s awake,” you think that the blonde woman is talking, but you can’t tell. All your senses are disoriented: your sight is blurry and out of focus like you can only imagine a human’s to be. You’re only able to hear the cackling of a fire somewhere and distant muttering here and there. The pain is strangely numb, but you are terrified that it will come back if you move an inch. Your arm that was burned with what smells like some kind of acid is strung up against above your head. You can smell blood, old dried blood, and new blood, fresh.

 

You blink. The moon is still out, but it’s shifting, giving away time. It has to have been at least two hours, but there are parts of you that say it could have been days. You can’t tell, as you keep passing out. Weakly you try to think of what could be happening with Stiles, but it is too hard to conjure up the possibilities. Your brain feels sluggish and scattered, jumping from thought to thought without much effort. Feral regressions are starting to edge their way in, and you need to resist those temptations. That is giving up your human brain. That is welcoming death.

 

You know that they are keeping you confused on purpose, with time and with your senses, but you don’t know how. The blood smells only hours old, but that could be false. You can’t feel the ache in your muscle above your heart, but it some part of you still hopes that it’s only because the rest of your body is going into shock.

 

Rustling around you. You open your eyes.

 

Blonde woman and Lydia are crouched in front of you. Lydia’s face is trained into a blank expression, but her eyes don’t meet yours, so there may be something in that. Blonde woman is pulling out a small box, which she opens to reveal a syringe full of clear liquid. You eye it wearily, trying to keep your breathing steadier. Something is broken inside, and it makes you wheeze and stumble over your breath.

 

“Why don’t you just kill me,” you ask her plainly. Lydia jumps, perhaps not knowing you were awake, but you don’t look at her. You keep your eyes focused on the other woman.

 

“We are going to kill you,” the blonde lady says, tilting her head to the left as she picks up the syringe. “Then we’re going to kill your entire Pack, and then I am going to personally find that boy who took something from me, and destroy him.”

 

You feel the panic swell in your gut. She knows that Stiles is with your Pack, or at least in this area. She knows that he has something of hers, but you don’t know what that is. Your throat is shot. There is no way of calling out into the woods, no way or warning your Beta’s. You have been an Alpha for nearly seven years and here you are like pathetic piece of bait, unable to protect yourself or your Pack. Something like dread fills your stomach, as your skull pounds so hard you feel your eyes roll back into head for a moment.

 

It’s getting harder to breathe properly. You’re taking shorter, shallower breaths as you watch the Blonde woman make work of the syringe, pumping it to make sure the tip isn’t blocked. She’s nearly about to sink it into the heart of your thigh when Lydia sticks a hand out, grabbing her wrist.

 

“Wait,” she says calmly, but her jaw jumps when the other woman looks at her, one eye seeing and the other not. “Go get the hammer. Breaking some of his joints will make the sickness spread faster.”

 

“That’s…actually an excellent idea,” she says, nodding appreciatively at Lydia. “You would have made a wonderful part of our team.”

 

As soon as she leaves, Lydia turns to you and thrusts another needle, this one with dark silver liquid in it. She looks frightened as your body shivers around the needle, before yanking it out and stowing it away again.

 

“This is almost over, I promise,” she whispers, but you’re not sure you believe her, and she doesn’t look like she believes herself, either. The other woman comes over with two hammers and hands one to Lydia, who takes it like it is too hot to hold.

 

This time, you pass out after they shatter your elbow. At this point, that’s considered lucky.

      

-

 

 

You start to hallucinate. You’ve lasted longer in these kinds of situations – usually it’s four or five days before you start to drift into a dream state, and in Kate’s case, you were delirious with electric shock for most of it anyway, but this is different. This is completely different.

 

 

The bones in your forearms start to heal together, the joints spinning faster than they usually would in this state, and you swear your hear them click back into place like screws or bolts. The trees above you are sixty shades of different greens and they blend together before your eyes, blurring and bleeding into the sky above. You wish you could see the moon. You’re so weak.

 

 

Next to you someone crouches down, and you loll your head towards them. It’s Laura, pushing the blood out of your eyes, her fingers like tiny flowers on your skin. Her auburn hair grazes against your soiled shirt and you lean in, trying to smell her. Her smell used to be a mixture of home, clean soap, and the soft gardenia candles your mother used to keep lit around the house sometimes.

 

 

“Hey,” she whispers, cupping your cheek. She doesn’t look worried or angry or reluctantly elated – all common expressions Laura had, but instead she’s just smiling softly. Her hand feels both cool and warm on your cheek, and you blink, your eyelids getting heavier.

 

 

“Hi,” you murmur, unable to keep your head up. “You’re here. Am…am I dead?”

 

 

Laura shakes her head at you, her knees tucked into your side as she huddles close, sprawled with her back to where the hunters are like she’s protecting you. Sometimes when you were barely eighteen and trying to peel the skin off your bones, your sister would wrap all her limbs around you. Sometimes you’d try to buck her off you, resist the comforting sense of Pack because there was nothing in the world you hated more than yourself, not even Kate Argent.

 

 

Laura knew this, and she knew about Kate, and she held on because you were all she had. You were all she had, and you remember refusing to say goodbye to her when she left for California. She was just trying to be a good Alpha. She was just trying to be a good sister. You hadn’t understood – since when have you understood anything, actually, and the last time you saw your sister she had threaded her fingers through yours. She had tried to catch your eye, say goodbye properly, but you hadn’t even spared her a look.

 

 

Something inside of you has broken, you think. You start to cry, eyes burning. “I’m sorry,” you say, feeling every awful thing boil up in your blood until your head rushes with it. “I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye. I’m sorry I wasn’t there in time.”

 

 

“Hey, listen to me,” she commands quietly, kissing the side of your dirty, tear-streaked face. She is uncharacteristically tender with you, her face gentle and sad. “You can’t save everyone from everything. You tried so hard. I wish I could make you see. Mom and Dad are so proud.”

 

 

“Am I dying?” you whisper, head wedged between her chin and collarbone. Her body is obstructing the view of the hunters further into the trees. All the burnt skin and aching muscles, the half-broken bones, the stars above, the color of the trees, it’s all seemed to dim and fade. Your thoughts are far away and clouded. This morning was a million years ago. You can think distantly of a pair of large, pale hands coming up to touch your cheeks, but nothing more than that. You blink again.

 

 

“Yes,” she says a moment later. “I can feel it.”

 

 

Something inside of you relaxes, and you breathe wetly on her neck. “Okay.”

 

 

“You can come with me, and this will be all over, if you want. I will protect you,” Laura says, cupping the exposed part of your jaw with her hand. Distantly you see a memory of Laura when she was ten and you were six and she was running back and forth between sprinklers one summer, her laughter shrill every time she passed through the water. Even though it was the same every time, it surprised her. Her laugh filled up every crevice of your body, every crack, every seam.

 

 

Your sister has always filled up all the voids. You got harder as you got older, so she tried harder. Laura’s never seen you as anything but her little brother. For a long time it was just you and her, and to her you were just a kid. Just a dumb, fucking kid. You miss that. You’ve never allowed yourself to miss it, but you do.

 

 

You are not the rock. She was the rock, just like your mother was the rock and your family was the rock, and your Pack was the rock, and Stiles was the rock. You are not the rock.

 

 

You are the water beating against the rock, again and again, relentless, until it cracks.

 

 

“Or you can hold on, babe,” she says, stroking the side of your face. “You could hold on and make it a little longer, and you can stay here.”

 

 

“That sounds hard,” you croak. The thirst is starting to set in.

 

 

“It will be,” Laura says honestly. “But we’ll be waiting for you whenever you decide to go. It’s your choice, brother. It’s always gonna be your choice.”

 

 

“I love you,” you say, and she grips you tightly, holding your body close to hers for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

 

 

Laura is already starting to fade away. Her smell first, and then her presence, disperses. When you open your eyes, you’re alone. You lean over to throw up, this time just blood and mucus and spit. It lands where your sister was a moment ago.

 

 

-

 

You awake to burning. Your skin feels like it might fall off. Your bones aren’t breaking, and you trying to flinch away from the source, but you can’t move. You try to tuck your knees into your stomach to protect it, and there’s a cackle of electricity somewhere. A whimper escapes your mouth before you can stop it.

 

 

Sounds are starting to escape you, and one of your eyes won’t open anymore. Your skin isn’t healing, too overloaded with injury and confusion, or perhaps whatever you were injected with earlier. The voices get quieter and louder, shocking you into wakefulness for brief moments before you sink back under. Your shoulders are tight and painful with the way your arms are drawn up above your head. Electricity makes you twitch every so often as it thrums through your body, making your bones click together when you move. At least your hands are numb.

 

 

Mostly you see just images and colors before a tremor of pain runs through you, making you twitch. You keep waiting to pass out, but sleep never comes. Swallowing has become somewhat of a luxury. You’re thirsty.

 

 

 _Let it go_ , a voice says. Faces flash on the inside of your eyelids. Blonde hair. Lavender. The sound of an engine. Blankets in a basket. The wind across your nose. Amber eyes. Happiness teased itself on the tip of your tongue. You try to find the softest spot in your mind to rest. The sounds around you stop. The wind stops. All you can find now is peace.

 

 

You blink once, looking up for the moon. Like three drops of blood in the snow.

 

 

Let it go.

 

-

 

A great, magnificent roar sounds. It must rip the bark clear off the trees. You stir, blinking, the world around you spinning so much you think you might be sick again.

 

 

“Derek?” someone says, touching your face. Your arms are released from above you, and you grunt, feeling the blood rushing back into your fingers. “He’s alive!” the same person calls out.

 

 

You feel wolves all around you, multiple heartbeats beating in near unison, a magnitude of voices echoing through the forest. Your head pounds harder than it had before, and a heat spreads from your chest outwards through your body like you’ve been lit on fire. It’s a different heat than it was with the hunters, because it is something that comes from within – anger. Anger is spreading through you like your body is a window for it to pass through. You can’t hear or see anything and your heart is beating loudest of them all around until there’s no possible way you can contain it.

 

 

This is not your rage.

 

 

A hand reaches out, sweaty and slick with blood. You take it for a moment, breath leaving you like it’s been sucker punched. When they grab on to your hands you instantly feel the Pack bond through it and you can feel yourself breathe for a second, clear headed. Your mind eases, and then slowly, your thoughts stop completely.

 

 

This must be death. You were so close. Everything you tried so hard to achieve was just over the horizon, and you were almost there. A bird cries somewhere, slow and mournful. It must be dawn soon. You try to picture the sun rising up over the trees, but you can’t.

 

_The birds chirp, so close to their predators._

 

You can’t remember if you said that. You remember long hands, but nothing else.

 

 

-

 

In death, you dream.

 

 

You are a wolf who is both stronger and angrier than you ever experienced. There is so much power. Your bones feel like metal bars and you rise above all other wolves, growling so loud that the birds leave the trees. You see a human out of the corner of your eye, and even before the thought of attack even finishes in your head, you’ve darted and attacked.

 

 

Memories flash before you, making you flinch. Blood. Clinking metal. Bitter fucking cold. You growl again, looking into the face of a hunter you don’t recognize, face distorted. Your spine tingles when you slash his throat with one claw. His blood smells sweet, coppery, like dirt and processed sugar.

 

 

Again you move. The world blurs around you as you dart through trees, missing arrows as they soar through air. You leap over another wolf, a Beta, who is being shot at by another hunter. They have seven seconds to realize they’re about to die before you attack with your teeth, ripping their neck out completely.

 

 

You catch a glimpse of yourself in the reflection of a gun in a dead man’s hand. You’re glowing bright red all over, larger than any other wolf you’ve known. You’re mutated, strong, crouched on two hind legs. You are a monster.

 

 

Death, gun metal and sickness seep into your senses as night breaks and morning rises up head. You tip your head back to let out a tangible roar. It tastes like grief on your tongue.

 

 

-

 

You never see Laura again like she said. You never see anyone. Perhaps this is your punishment for not choosing death earlier. Death is an endless darkness. Time never passes, but it never stops either.

 

 

You know you’re still dreaming but you can’t remember any of them. Memories surface and then disappear again. Birds chirping. Hands. Lavender. Blonde hair. Birds.

 

 

You want to say to yourself, _I am not afraid_. It feels like you’ve said it before. _I am not afraid. I am not afraid_.

 

 

But it’s not true.

 

-

 

“Hey,” a voice says above you, “You’re awake.”

 

 

You can feel the sweat and grime on your face, your eyes nearly glued shut with sleep. You try to open your mouth only to realize it’s incredibly dry. Your throat aches. Someone above you – a female, from the smell, places a wet cloth on your forehead, which helps.

 

 

You open your eyes. Allison is sitting on the edge of your bed, her hair pulled high from her face. There’s a bruise on the underside of her jaw.

 

 

You try to find your words. “I thought I was dead.”

 

 

Allison shakes her head once, lower lip tucked into her mouth. “Almost.”

 

 

Your head is pounding. You look down at your arms. One of them in bandaged. “What happened?”

 

 

“The hunters found you running around the preserve and attacked you. They had set up a camp twenty miles from the house. We – we thought you went to meet Stiles up at the border, or just wanted time alone. When Stiles came back alone, we went looking,” she looks away for a moment, jaw flexing. “We were sure you were dead. But when Scott shifted, he wasn’t the Alpha.”

 

 

You swallow again. Allison reaches over to remove the cloth from your head, passing you a cup to drink from. After another breath, you ask, “Is everyone okay?”

 

 

When she nods, a weight is lifted from your chest you weren’t aware of before. Your room is flooded with a soft light that hints at midday and your pillows and sheets reek of sickness and sweat, as do your clothes. You lift your bandaged hand again.

 

 

“Why do I have this?” you raise an eyebrow, coughing a little. Your whole chest rattles with ache and acute pain.

 

 

Allison hesitates, eyes flickering. You think suddenly that if she were a wolf she would be an Alpha no questions asked. She is so similar to your mother, especially when she looks at you like this, intense and serious and so passionate she might break with it; she is so much like the Alpha your mother used to be. You know that within the Argent family, the women become the leaders of their groups. Allison gave that up when she helped you build the Pack again and then officially when she graduated from Berkley and moved back to Beacon Hills. She is still a leader, though. She’s still a warrior.

 

 

“They did something to you,” she says slowly, like she isn’t sure how to explain it properly. “Stiles would be able to tell you. But it doesn’t heal like a wolf heals. It heals like a human heals, and it’s incredibly damaged skin still. I’m sorry.”

 

 

You examine the bandage. You can see Isaac’s work in the way he taped it over. “Don’t be,” you say slowly, feel your body start to sink into sleep again. “You did everything right.”

 

 

Blinking becomes harder, and your eyes start to close on their own accord again. The last thing you see is Allison looming over you, a small, bruised smile on her face.

 

 

-

 

When you wake up again, its dark out and Erica is curled into your side, a cascade of her blonde hair falling over your stomach. She smells like fresh gardening dirt and fabric softener and a hint of whiskey. You breathe her deeply for a moment, grounding yourself. She is keeping your left side incredibly warm.

 

 

Your body aches, but mostly it is tired from healing all day. Your undamaged hand reaches for the water on the side table and you drain it, dropping it next to the bed. You sigh, feeling like you’ve slept a thousand years and then not at all.

 

 

Remembering proves to be more difficult than you thought. You know were captured and the electric rod and that Lydia Martin there, but little else is coming to mind. It’s hard to pinpoint the hours and the order of events. You still have no idea if Lydia was on your side or not. You try not to think about it.

 

 

“Your heart,” Erica murmurs, lifting her head up and squinting at you. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and you look down to find a small puddle of drool on your shirt. Nice. “What are you thinking about to make your heart beat so fast?”

 

 

You swallow, refusing to meet her eye. Erica’s hand comes down to push your floppy, greasy hair off your forehead.

 

 

“Hey,” she says, louder now, poking you in the cheek. “Sourwolf.”

 

 

You take the bait; turning to glare at her. She smiles, but it’s off, somehow. A little weak. Then you say, “You were the one who found me.”

 

 

Erica looks down, picking a string out of your quilt. She nods. “Your sister and I carried you back to the house. She and I get along pretty well now, since she doesn’t think Boyd and I are together.”

 

 

You laugh, you can’t help it, and Erica chuckles halfheartedly. You rub your chest with your free hand, kneading out the spasm of pain that arises. She places her hand over yours, stopping you and resting your hand against your breast plate.

 

 

“I want to be angry at you for almost getting killed, but it wasn’t even your stupidity that did it this time,” she says, and clucks her tongue. “You’re the closest thing to family I’ve ever had. Everyone else has somebody, even within the Pack, you know? They’ve got people. I don’t. I’ve got a retired foster father who I email once a month and you. I’ve got you, and only you.”

 

 

“Hey,” you say, because Erica is starting to cry. It’s too vulnerable, too real, too much. You tug on one of her curls until she glares at you, eyes full of tears. She’s not wearing any make up, and because of that she looks younger, like Cora.

 

 

“Shit,” she curses, wiping her face. “Sorry. I’m just so fucking glad you didn’t die, Derek. I kept thinking about that time I died and you had to bring me back and how much it fucking took from you, how it nearly killed you, and I thought, ‘I’m not strong enough to do that. And I’m pretty sure we don’t have any Hags in the phone book, so he’s going to fucking bite the dust, and it won’t matter. Nothing will matter,’” she shakes her head like she’s trying to rid herself of her feelings, and you know that feeling extremely well.

 

 

You sigh again, even as your lungs protest when you blow out a long breath. “You would have lived on with Scott as your Alpha, and everything would have mattered. Everything would still have mattered.”

 

 

“You’re such a stubborn dipshit,” Erica rolls her eyes, but she lies back down next to you, pulling your quilt back up around you, tucking you in like a child. When she catches your halfhearted attempt at a glare, she smiles at you, nestling into your side. Erica’s right about a lot of things, but nothing you’ll admit.

 

 

It doesn’t really matter. She knows anyway.

 

 

-

 

The next morning, Allison helps you sit up and into the shower. One of your thigh muscles is swollen and stiff and makes it hard to walk. Isaac and Deaton are unsure if that will ever be the same since they don’t know what you were injected with. This is one of the longest periods you’ve ever been this weak and feeble. You would be embarrassed, except your Pack seems to be amazed that you are even alive, so that helps lessen the anxiety that you aren’t healing like usual.

 

 

No one is really clear about what happened that night. It makes you nervous. If you were of full energy, you’d demand it, and be angry about it. But for now you let yourself be coddled, which is to say as little as possible. Mostly, you sleep. Isaac makes you a tall cup of tea out of some roots Erica keeps stored year round that helps you sleep without waking up from discomfort, and a side effect is no dreaming.

 

 

You sleep and you don’t dream. It is possibly everything you could ever ask for.

 

 

It’s a little strange and definitely humiliating how much you’re looking forward to this shower, until you realized that you can’t actually make it to the bathroom only two feet away on the other side of your bedroom. Allison stands with her feet apart and her hands on her hips, fixing you with a stare of determination that makes you shrink back into your blankets.

 

 

“I’ll be fine,” you had protested at first, but she was having none of it.

 

 

“It’s been two and a half days,” she clicks her tongue with heady disapproval. “It’s time. It’ll make you feel a lot better. Isaac was going to help, but he was called into work, so here I am.”

 

 

She helps you undress out of your sweatpants and cotton crewneck, and you lean your half your weight on her as you limp dumbly to the bathroom. Allison helps you cover your bandage in a plastic bag to protect it, and when she accidently steadies you with her hand on your hip, dangerously close your naked nether regions, you flinch.

 

 

Allison is having none of that. “You do not get to be weird about this. You’ve seen me naked.”

 

 

“That – that was different,” you say, ignoring the way your face heats up.

 

 

“Derek,” she says slowly, like you are a child, “You were up and close in person with my – “Allison motions down towards her crotch, “My vagina. As a _child_ was coming out of it. Okay? Fair’s fair. Now, I put a clean towel on the top hook, and I ran the bath. When you need help standing up, I’ll be just outside changing the sheets.”

 

 

She closes the door on you before you have a chance to retaliate, but come to think of it, you’re not sure you would even have a comeback for a tongue lashing of that ferocity. Fuck, you’re too tired for this shit. You sink into the warm bathwater, minding your arm, and sit there for an indecently long time. It feels good to be clean again.

 

 

-

 

 

You still haven’t seen Stiles. You try very hard not to think about that at all.

 

-

 

Memories of Laura come back to you in pieces. They’re distorted and clouded with other memories of intense pain, but just before you wake up fully, you can pick them apart within your foggy, twilight thoughts. They leave you feeling cold.

 

 

Isaac helps you down into the kitchen the third day since you were attacked. He helps you up to sit on the table just after breakfast and examines your leg and the puncture wound, noting down things to go over with Deaton later.

 

 

You’re still not able to walk on it. You feel so vulnerable – human, almost, which is something you’ve never been and never really felt. Emotional bullshit you have carried around with you often and it was the only remarkable human trait about you. Physicality, however, was never a problem, and you have always felt like a wolf in your body, shifted or not. This time it’s the opposite, and it’s unsettling.

 

 

The house is unusually clear of everyone, even though you can still smell the hour old remnants of breakfast. When you go out to sit on back porch, stretching your leg and breathing the first real fresh air in days, Boyd comes out from the clearing where his shed is, dressed in coveralls with a large sweatshirt on top.

 

 

“Derek,” he says, and smiles with all his teeth. Rarely does Boyd express anything more than pleasant – or annoyed – neutrality, except in cases concerning your sister, you’ve come to understand. You’ve always envied this of him, his ability to have such a steady reign on his emotions. They’ve always fucked you over. “Good to see you awake, man.”

 

 

“Thanks,” you nod, moving over when Boyd sits down next to you. You’re wearing day old pajamas and a bathrobe. Though you’ve both always matched nearly in size, he seems giant to you at this moment. “How are you?”

 

 

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” he raises a brow. He smiles a moment later, shrugging. “I’m good. Got a knife to the shoulder, but that healed after Isaac stitched me up,” he scratches his chin, and then shakes his head. “Those people – they weren’t right, Derek. We’ve dealt with Alpha Packs and hunters and rogue Argents and giant lizards and I’ve still never seen anything as fucked as that.”

 

“Shit,” you sigh, wishing you had something to do with your hands. Boyd is twirling some kind of wrench between his fingers over and over again.

 

 

“Yeah. You were really messed up. Erica was beside herself. Cora – she, started attacking people left and right, even though we told her stay at the house and wait, because of her baby, but she – obviously, didn’t listen. Not that I could blame her,” Boyd rolls her eyes, “You’re her brother. I don’t know. She started bleeding, and we thought she might lose the baby. She didn’t,” he reassures you when you turn to him, a hand up.

 

 

“No one tells me anything around here,” you ground out accusingly, “Does the fact that I’m the Alpha mean absolutely nothing?”

 

 

“Derek,” Boyd fixes you with a deadpan look, “You’ve just been tortured and asleep for two days. We figured we wean you in to all the bullshit of what actually happened.”

 

 

You don’t really have anything to say to that, and Boyd knows it. If it were anyone but Boyd, you’d probably do anything to wipe the smirk right off his face, but you figure it’s well deserved. Not that you’d ever admit that. You instead you say, “Well, I haven’t even seen my sister.”

 

 

“Oh, she’s seen you,” he retaliates, “She’s been sleeping sitting up in that chair since she dragged you home, which, by the way, she did with a huge chunk of her side missing. Just saying, before you take a huge bite into her about it.”

 

You fix Boyd with a halfhearted glare. Finally, you retort, “You seem to really like defending my sister. Please spare me any details of whatever you’re doing with her.”

 

 

Boyd puts his hands up, head ducked down as he shakes with silent laughter. He claps your shoulder when he sobers up, his hand a heavy symbol of familiarity. “How are you doing, though? We thought.…”

 

 

“I was dead, I know,” you say quickly, hoping your Pack will quit bringing that up. For some reason, you feel really guilty that you couldn’t – that you didn’t withstand. That you didn’t try. “I….at some point – this is going to sound weird, but have you ever seen a ghost?”

 

Boyd clasps his hands together.

 

“Well, I believe in the Holy Spirit, don’t I? I believe there are things in this world we can’t see…Hell, look at us, man. We might as well be the present day Californian Munsters.”

 

 

You let out a startled laugh; you always forget the winter during Boyd’s apprenticeship when he became obsessed with old television shows. Isaac bemoaned all year that he clogged up the Netflix recommendations with _Beverly Hillbilly’s_ and _I Love Lucy_.

 

 

“After they finished torturing me, I started hallucinating,” you mutter. It’s interesting that you fully accept what happened to you, or what you understand to be, but phrasing it into words still makes you stutter like some immature child. “Or maybe it was real. I don’t know. The point is, my sister came to me. Laura. She gave me a choice.”

 

 

You’re grateful Boyd doesn’t ask about the choice she gave you – he is far more intuitive than that.

 

 

Instead, he looks down at his hands and says, “I used to have a little brother. He drowned when I was six and he was four. Back when the Alpha Pack was, and you – when I died, I came into being in this strange place. I thought I was in heaven, except there was nothing there. It was my brother sitting next to me, and he didn’t really talk, but he pointed to the left, and then the right, and then just said, ‘Choose’. I still…sometimes, I still think I can hear him running up and down the hallway. I don’t know. I think you saw what you needed to see, Derek. I think that’s real.”

 

 

You never talk about what happened with Boyd and the Alpha Pack. Everything was forgiven – though tetchy for a while after you sacrificed for Boyd to have him brought back to life. You swallow, nodding, and Boyd claps you on the shoulder again. He helps you back up to standing before following you inside.

 

-

 

 

Cora is sitting on the couch when you shuffle pathetically into the living room. She makes room for you on the couch as you throw yourself down. She scoots down next to you until you’re pressed hip to hip as she covers a massive purple blanket around you. It’s one you don’t recognize.

 

Friends is on low. Cora finds your hand under the blanket and holds it, very loosely, like you might push her away. She looks to you once commercial hits, tucking her messy braid behind her ear.

 

 

“Okay,” she says slowly, “I’m not gonna cry about this stupid shit. But if you even so much as cough around me, I swear to God, Derek.”

 

 

“Boyd wouldn’t like you taking the Lord’s name in vain,” you say despite yourself. Cora fixes you with a harsh look, unimpressed. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I’m a pain in your ass, and I love you.”

 

 

“Yeah,” Cora rolls her eyes, but you feel the way she trembles silently when you pull her in closely, smelling her hair. “Yeah.”

 

-

 

Scott’s knock on your doorframe stirs you out of the semi-conscious state you were. You blink, wanting to sit up but are too lazy to do so. You feel as if you’ve just woken up out of a very long nap, which is actually most likely accurate. Disoriented and swimming with ache, you notion for him to come in.

 

 

“Hey,” Scott says, still in his vet clothes. You’ve never known him to not go into work, especially with Deaton about to retire early. Being a part time emissary to your Pack and dealing with the different magical energies that travel through Beacon Hills proves to be a full time job.

 

 

“How is everything?” you ask.

 

 

Scott shrugs, looking up at the ceiling. “Surviving. Heard you flashed the mother of my child.”

 

 

You let out a long-suffering sigh. “Scott. Don’t make me rip your head off.”

 

 

Scott scoffs, “Okay, you do that, buddy, with the state you’re in. Anyway, I wanted to go over Pack business with you, if you’re up for it.”

 

 

You nod. You have to appreciate, though three days late, that Scott is purposely clueing you in. You’d care a lot more if you weren't constantly on the brink of falling asleep and trying to learn how to fix your damn leg and waking up to find Cora next to you, who then forces you to watch episodes of Golden Girls with her once she realizes you’re awake.

 

 

He starts right in, “The hunters that captured you were part of the Canadian Underground that hunted Werewolves and experimented on them, including Stiles and Jackson. When the Underground was destroyed, most of the lower workers and wolves died, but a few escaped. The seven hunters that found you were led by a blonde woman – “

 

 

“With a scar through her eye,” you intercept. Scott nods, looking grim.

 

 

“Yeah. Her name is Dr. Hades. Turns out she has a personal vendetta against Stiles, but he hasn’t really been straight with me about it. It’s been – well, chaotic, to say the least. Between nearly losing you, and then Cora getting attacked, with the baby – and finding Stiles’ Betas, which – dude – Jackson was more ill than we were led to believe. I don’t know how you do this shit all the time. Well, I do. But Christ.”

 

 

You know Scott well enough to know he’s not finished. He likes tangents, and you have learned to just grit your teeth through them. “Anyway. We were able to track you within six hours. Which, is a personal best for us, but these people…” he sighs, looking like the weight of the world has been sitting on his shoulders.

 

 

You know that feeling like you know everything else. Scott picks up where he left off, though an uncomfortable look takes over. “They were methodical, skilled, and cruel. We’ve withstood capture way longer than that and – well. They don’t hold back. I’m sorry we didn’t get there sooner.”

 

 

He looks like he wants to reach out, but doesn’t. You’re kind of touched, but mostly thankful. You’re not sure what you would do if you and Scott shared a moment. It’s just not the type of relationship you have.

 

“Anyway, we all shifted, and Erica tried to bring you back, but you wouldn’t wake up, so she started to drag you back to the house. Cora was injured by then, and so we sent them away back to the house, where you could be safe. When Stiles saw what they did to you, and when he saw that woman, he just lost it. We all – I mean, we all shifted, but he – he turned into this enormous thing – I don’t know. He looked more than wolf. He was huge, like Peter used to be when he turned me. Killed three out of seven,” Scott says, running a hand through his hair and looking desperately heavy hearted. “He’s a bit…messed up about it. I don’t think he wanted us to know he could shift like that.”

 

“Yeah,” you swallow, your throat suddenly dry. You reach over for your water, drinking half in one gulp. “What else.”

 

 

You weren’t sure it was possible, but Scott turns even more morose. “We almost killed Lydia, because she with them. But she said she pretended to be with them to help find Jackson, who they had tried to kill. Jackson is…he’s pretty sick,” Scott says, wiping his mouth. “I think he might die. Stiles has been with him, trying to help him. He’s in a lot of pain.”

 

 

Scott sighs again, and you feel suddenly exhausted. You’re overloaded with two much information, about Stiles and Lydia and Jackson and everything you can possibly remember that happened that night. It explains why Stiles hasn’t seen you, anyway. He is trying to keep his Packmate from dying.

 

 

It’s strange to think Stiles even has a Pack. But you knew he must have someone out there all long, if he were to remain an Alpha, at least someone who hadn’t denounced him and found another Alpha. Deep down you knew this, but didn’t want to face the prospect of possibly losing Stiles to his own Pack if or when they showed up. It was selfish, you know. But you’ve never been a saint.

 

 

Scott leaves with a mocking salute, and you roll your eyes in return. You listen to him as he thunders down the stairs and starts to play with Sam, who is in the living room with Isaac. She had been with Chris Argent the night your Pack went looking for you, Allison had informed you. You figure that was probably the safest choice, even though you and Argent have always agreed to disagree on most things in life.

 

 

You think of the dream you had once you had succumbed to darkness, the way the once flickering bruise has exploded into one large flame that engulfed your body; how you had been a monster, a bright red monster, killing people and thinking nothing of it, feeling rage you had never quite managed to channel into pure power before.

 

 

I learned how to kill humanely. Make them think they were falling asleep.

 

 

You roll over onto your side, hand pressed up against your chest. You have been so distracted with everything else you hardly noticed the little melodic thrum of the bruise on your breastbone, a warmth just above your heart. You push the butt of your palm into now, feeling the Bond quiver and flow underneath your hand. It’s still there.

 

 

Barely. But it’s still there.

 

-

 

 

It’s the first night you don’t drink the tea Isaac makes you for you, and it’s the first night you dream again. You can’t remember them but you wake up with sweat pooling at the bottom your back and your breathing irregular and hard. Your thigh hurts and you squeeze it, trying to relieve some of the pain.

 

 

You aren’t rejoicing the return of them.

 

 

-

 

You pad down quietly to the room at the end of the hall. You can see the bright coniferous trees from the large bay windows even from the doorframe. It’s strange to think that the last time you were in this room it had been Christmas day. That was only two months ago, but it could have been years.

 

 

The second thing you notice, after the trees, is the smell of sickness, and underneath that, the lingering tremor of death. It turns your stomach. Jackson is on the bed, and Stiles is sitting with his back to the door in the wooden desk chair. He’s staring out one of the windows, searching. You don’t see anything in the branches. Not even a bird.

 

Jackson looks like the boy you remembered when he was going to Beacon Hills high school, except shrouded with illness. His cheekbones are sunken in, his muscles deflated and thin. There’s a thin sheen of sweat on his face, his hair pushed to the side of his head. He’s sleeping, but you can tell from the erratic beating of his heart that it’s restless, uncomfortable. The cartilage on his left ear is missing, like it’s been cut off.

 

 

Stiles turns to you without speaking and gives you a long, heavy look. He doesn’t appear to have slept or changed his clothes, and he has a withdrawn, sad quality about him. There’s tension around his sharp jaw and pursed thin lips, the way he curves defensively around Jackson, even in the very obvious weakened state you’re in.

 

 

“Stiles,” you say quietly. You actually don’t know what to say at all. There are a million and one things you want to say, some you need to say – but you fall short. You stand there in your stained sweatpants and stupid sweatshirt and don’t say a thing.

 

 

If it were possible for Stiles to look meek, he has succeeded. “I felt the Bond disappear. The beginnings of it, anyway. I felt it fade when I was running back. I wasn’t – I was late. I had to carry Jackson back, and I didn’t make it here in time. I could have made it back in time, and everything would have been fine.”

 

 

“No, Stiles,” you shake your head. “It wasn’t down to whether or not you made your time schedule.”

 

 

Stiles shoots you a withering glare. “They only had you for six hours. We deduced that. But I knew… I knew…every minute was a death sentence. The wire around your wrists was poisoned to keep you confused. It sinks into your bloodstream and doesn’t stop until you remove it.”

 

 

You nod. That explains how you weren’t able to gather your bearings or what time it was. It could have been twelve days, or a month, or ten minutes, and you wouldn’t have known.

 

 

“Allison said you could better explain my arm isn’t healing,” you say, lifting up your sleeve to show him the bandage. Isaac changed it this morning.

 

 

Stiles looks away, hand fiddling with the edge of Jackson’s blanket. “That was Demetri. He likes decorating into the skin and cauterizing it so it never heals over and disappears. Uses this kind of wolfsbane that makes it so the skin won’t ever regrow. They perfected that on other wolves, but not me. He didn’t like me.”

 

 

You don’t want to ask why. Stiles has reverted to the bitter and mistrustful and angry young wolf you first met, who made you want to walk on glass and demand of him things that aren’t fair at the same time. You look at him for a moment, searching for the Stiles you recognize, the Stiles you – the Stiles you know. He looks at you flatly back.

 

“That woman says you took something from her,” you say instead, and Stiles turns away sharply, jaw flexing. You can hear his teeth grate together. “What was it?”

 

 

He doesn’t answer, instead opting to press his hand against Jackson’s breastbone, swirling ribbons of black pain curling up his arm. He grunts, taking it for several minutes before letting up. You watch this happen with an uncomfortable, deep seated sadness inside of you.

 

 

“They’ve made him sick. I don’t know what they injected him with, but he and Lydia and Ethan got seperated somewhere near Vancouver, and they shot a dart into them, and now he’s like this,” Stiles says darkly, running a hand through his hair. “He’s going to die soon.”

 

 

“I’m sorry,” you say quietly.

 

 

Stiles places his hand over his heart, and the heat increases, radiating from your bruise. “I know. I know you’re sorry. It’s…”

 

 

He shakes his head, shrugging. You can feel how hard it is for him to swallow.

 

 

You want so badly to touch him, but you don’t. It isn’t the right time. You leave him be, even though it tugs at your bones to do so. It isn’t the right time. Perhaps it’ll never be the right time for Stiles and you.

 

-

 

Lydia and Ethan are staying at Scott and Allison’s apartment in town. Ethan, too has scars all over his body, though to a lesser extent than Stiles does.

 

He keeps his distance when they both come up to the house. You were having breakfast with most of the Pack, besides Boyd, who was at work, and Stiles, who was upstairs. You’re not sure if he’s left his room in days. You sleep a lot.

 

Lydia has enough supernatural poise to knock. She is, in the daylight, as beautiful and terrifying as you’ve ever seen her. The scar where Peter bit her still remains on her arm, cold and gleaming. The scar on her hand, from when she finally killed him a second time, also stands out against the paleness of her skin.

 

Allison greets her as an old friend, but the rest of your  Pack eyes her and Ethan wearily. When she turns to you, even from across the table, you can’t help but flinch slightly.

 

“I want to formally apologize for what I did to you, Derek. I thought they were keeping Jackson somewhere, and I needed to blend in with them. They were unaware, of course, that I was the one who set the fire on their Underground camps.”

 

“Most of those who were lost in the fire were wolves,” you can't help but point out.

 

Lydia blinks, mouth parted. She nods a moment later. “I’m aware of that. I wasn’t thinking it through thoroughly. I just needed to find him.”

 

“You were going to leave me to die,” you slam your hand on the table, feeling your eyes flash red. It’s feeble, and you’re still too weak to shift. Lydia doesn’t startle, holding her own from across the dining room table. She’s dressed in all black, her red hair in a long, straight pony tail.

 

 

“No,” she shakes her head, “They wanted to stick you with the same serum they gave to Jackson. Instead I switched it for the lead needle. That’s – that’s why I had to break your bones,” Lydia protests, taking a large gulp of air. “I held them off from killing you as long as I could. I’m so sorry. I am.”

 

 

You feel the tick in your jaw, the stiff anger in your neck; the remembrance and fear of that hammer in her hand. You turn away from her, not wanting to look at her face, her long eyelashes, the red hair, the prettiness that is Lydia Martin. She’s absolutely lethal.

 

 

“I know that Jackson is going to die soon,” Lydia says, and her voice shakes, but she doesn’t cry. “I was in a debate club mostly conspiring witches at Yale, who told me of a Pack who was slaughtered in cold blood in Boston,” she explains. “I was worried. I knew Stiles had been turned, but we lost touch over the years. I took a train up to Boston to find him, and he wasn't there, and his whole Pack was dead. The next week, Jackson disappeared. It didn’t take me long to connect the two.”

 

 

“Which is when you realized what you had stumbled upon,” Scott fills in for her. Lydia nods. “I posed as a scientist's apprentice involved in creature modification. My first day I saw Stiles strapped to a table, and he was in so much pain he didn’t even recognize me,” she shakes her head, and you feel something close around your heart like a grip. “I wish I could have taken those people out more efficiently. But I panicked. I acted impulsively.”

 

 

Ethan runs his hand over her shoulder and she grips it. They don’t touch like lovers, but as friends. “I have chosen to be an Omega now,” Ethan says, “and I am going with Lydia. It’s nothing against Stiles. He was the best Alpha I could have had in there.”

 

 

“After that, Stiles will be free to choose what he wants to do. He won’t be obligated to a Pack if he doesn’t want to be,” Lydia says. She then looks at you again, directly without blinking. “This house is magic. I can feel it.”

 

 

You nod heavily. “A family friend helped enchant it. It repels non-Pack humans from ever wanting to see it, and is invisible to those whose intent is to cause it harm.”

 

 

Lydia looks impressed. “That’s old, old magic.”

 

Because of it, she can’t stay for long before it interferes with her Banshee intuition. She hugs Allison goodbye again, holding on tightly before bidding goodbye. Ethan nods tightly, a world of anger inside his eyes. You can feel the way it ripples over his skin like a current. The smell of his need for vengeance is both intoxicating and pungent.

 

 

Allison knocks on your door that night when you’re stretching your leg. “She’s going to come by, when Jackson…well. She can’t see him like this. She can’t be the one to stumble upon him like she does with others.”

 

 

You nod but don’t say anything. You’re not sure you can ever forgive her for what she did, the terror you felt, the way she broke your bones without so much as a flinch. It’s ingrained in your memory like a scar on your skull.

 

 

Allison doesn’t say anything else. She knows.

 

 

-

 

Jackson passes away on a Sunday afternoon with the late February rain hitting the window panes hard.

 

 

Stiles stands in the middle of his room, staring at Jackson’s body in silence before he pounds down the stairs and out the door, already shifting and disappearing into the woods.

 

 

The rain clears as Scott and Isaac bring the body down into the backyard. They bury him in the far side of the yard, next to a bushel of lavender plants. Erica makes a spiral of wolfsbane, her fingers caked with dirt. It’s mushy and damp, sucking you into the ground as you stand around him.

 

 

Lydia doesn’t cry when she shows up to say goodbye. “We haven’t been together for a long time,” she murmurs down to the fresh dirt. “But you were my first love.”

 

 

She leaves in a cloud of dust and gravel and grief, red hair curling around the window as she peels out and away.

 

 

-

 

 

That night, you can hear the cry of the lone wolf, searching for Selene. Your body yearns to shift, to change, to claim, to tap into the power just underneath your skin, but you resist. You listen to Stiles run all night. Your Bond tugs impatiently, but you ignore it.

 

 

You remember the nights that Stiles would sit on the front steps of the half-built Hale house, and the staggering weight you placed on yourself on being a new Alpha that Stiles always seemed to lift away from you for a few moments. His eyes used to be as round as saucer cups, the same color as a red moon. He used to like listening to you and your Betas howl to the moon. He said it sounded happy.

 

 

You miss that. You miss when it sounded happy to him. When everything was easy, and he was human, and nothing hurt like it hurts now.

 

 

You don’t sleep until the sun has broken the shroud of clouds, the red sky bleeding into your window.

 

 

-

 

 

You dream of electricity sometimes. It always shakes you into a state of alertness. Sometimes you imagine it, thrumming just above your fingertips. It’s fitting, you suppose. Your wolf always took a liking to lighting storms, but you always refused to examine why.

 

 

Stiles slips into your bed one night near the beginning of March, his body smelling of creek water and remorse and home. He smells like home, and you don’t know what to do with your hands.

 

 

“Hi,” he whispers, his eyes shiny like jewels in the dark. “How do you feel?”

 

You shrug, wiping the sleep from your mouth as you roll to your side to look at him. You’ve been mostly healed for nearly two weeks now, though the scars on your arms will never fade and your bones are made of metal and your thigh still gives you problems once in a while. You’re stronger than you’ve ever been before, but you understand now, about what Stiles said about not wanting all that power.

 

 

It feels wrong, sometimes. Your body channels too much electricity now, like you absorbed it that night. The Bond, with all its tugging and bruising, can make it worse.

 

 

Stiles licks his lips before relaxing into the pillows. “I want to tell you how happy I’ve been since I came here. As happy as I am capable of being, given everything.”

 

 

You blink slowly, watching the way his cheekbones flex as he opens and closes his mouth, searching for the right words. The new moon shines just above the scar on his eyebrow, like it’s just begging for you to smooth it out against his skin.

 

 

“And I want to thank you for everything you’ve done.”

 

 

“Stiles,” you say slowly, like his name is foreign to your tongue.

 

 

But Stiles shakes his head, his face all screwed up. “You need to know why she was after me. I was her personal project, you know? She tested everything she ever fucking concocted on me first. Her son was her second hand. So one day, I bit him and it turned him. Her son was a werewolf. Hades had no choice but to kill him.”

 

 

Hades. The irony is not lost on you. “You took her son,” you conclude, and Stiles nods solemnly. “So she tried to kill your Pack.”

 

“She _tried_ to kill the person I love the most,” he croaks, his voice shaking. You can feel his hands tremor against the mattress, and you reach out, pulling them to your chest, flush against the bruise on your heart. “This is why I can’t be here until I know she’s dead, okay? This is why.”

 

 

“Stiles, what are you saying?” You feel the dread in your stomach drop, something constricting tightly around you. He’s shaking like he used to when he would have panic attacks as a human, when his linen-lemon smell would turn funny with anxiety and fright. His hands are cold to the touch.

 

 

He shakes his head, taking a deep breath. “I’m saying that Lydia and Ethan are in San Francisco, tracking Hades. They’re on her trail, but they’re not – they don’t knowher like I do. I need to go and find her and kill her. I can’t rest until I know she’s dead.”

 

 

“You’re leaving?” you hate the way your voice sounds, hoarse and dead and so stupidly vulnerable. You feel slow, like being around Stiles intoxicates you, his smell now is vibrant, and you can see every single peach fuzz on his face, the raise of every bump on his face and hands, the different colors in his irises. You have him memorized.

 

 

You want to blame the Bond, but even you aren’t that ignorant.

 

 

“I’ll come back,” Stiles whispers, propelling his body close to yours, until all your bones line up. He is tender with your leg as he curls up next to you, bathing you in his scent. Stiles’ mouth is soft and wet and tastes like everything you are trying to remember. Your hands clutch at him, greedy and wanting.

 

 

You've never been close to Stiles like this, hands and fingers everywhere, mouth tracing every curved or crooked joint on his body, tongue finding his hip and then his cock in the dark. He tastes like salt and musk and sex and Stiles, and you squeeze your eyes shut as you bring him off, unable to face that this could be the last time.

 

 

When he brings you off, he kisses you as you come, and there is nothing else.

 

 

“When are you leaving?” you ask, eyes falling closed. He smiles, hand cupping your cheek, fingers outlining the corner of your eye.

 

 

“When the sun breaks. I’ll come back, though,” he whispers. “There’s nothing I want more than to come back, and be in peace. And be with you.”

 

You laugh dryly, eyes too heavy to keep open. “You are a romantic piece of shit.”

 

 

“That may be,” Stiles snipes, but there’s no real spark behind it, just longing, just anxiety. “But I’m nowhere near the neurotic head case you are, Grumpy wolf.”

 

 

“You better not be,” you murmur, voice sloppy with sleep. “I’m a mess.”

 

 

It’s true. You’ve had your bones broken once by this boy, when he was human. You’re bracing yourself for round two already. Stiles doesn’t say anything in return, instead reaching up with his long hands to curl around your neck. When you fall asleep, it’s the first time since not taking Isaac’s tea that you don’t dream.

 

 

-

 

Your bed is empty in the morning. There’s no trace of Stiles in his room, either.

 

 

Time passes. You run a lot, and train, learning how to combat with your new powers, the constant presence of electricity. You combat your nightmares and chest pain by staying up late at night with Cora and watching repeat sitcoms. It’s a better coping mechanism than some you’ve had in the past.

 

 

She’s starting to show, your sister. You were so bemused by the prospect of her being a mother at first, but now, perhaps, it makes more sense. Sam is already crawling. She is adventurous like her mother, but clumsy like her fathers.

 

 

Time passes. You dream a lot. Mostly of unpleasant things.

 

 

Full moon after full moon passes. Sometimes you stare out into the trees, looking for anything in the gaps. You wonder if this was what Stiles was always looking for. A sign. A sign for something.

 

 

Spring melts into a slow, mild Summer. It smells like honeydew and Erica is constantly tracking dirt into the house. The lavender where Jackson is buried attracts the most honeybees, and has flourished to twice the size it was before. It brings a constant draft in through the open windows.

 

 

The Pack moves on like it did before. They all come to terms and try to keep going. It still feels like you’re missing a limb. Sometimes Allison sets an extra plate by accident. Sometimes you wake up at dawn, waiting for him to come bounding in for your morning run. There’s a hole in your heart that you can't fill. Sometimes, you wish you could crawl your way through the bone and cut it out. It festers, like poison, like wine, like waiting. Waiting for a sign.

 

 

Time passes.

 

 

-

 

 

It's first morning light on the second of July. You sit up straight, your Bond thrumming with newfound power. You have your nose trained on the morning breeze, a foreign smell seeping into the west woods like wildfire. It’s not a smell you could ever miss again. Strong, powerful, singular; almost tangible as it fills your nose. Familiar.

 

 

_Alpha._

 

 

-

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Character death warnings include Sheriff Stilinski, at the beginning of the story, and Jackson, at the end. Neither are particularly gory.
> 
> Stiles is turned when he leaves for school on the East Coast, and is captured and taken to a underground encampment that experiments on werewolves and attempts to turn them into weapons, but werewolves are not known to the greater public.
> 
> There is a lot of content containing mentions of past torture, instances of rape and infanticide, and psychological effects of torture. For instance, Stiles explains what happens to him, or will suddenly have a story about being tortured from when he was captured. There are instances where he is depressed or dealing with depression, as well as night terrors and sleeplessness. It is not mentioned in the story whether he is sexually assaulted or not, but it could be inferred.
> 
> Near the end of the story, Derek is attacked and tortured by a group of hunters.
> 
> All of these characters in this story are supportive but sometimes uneducated on how to help someone deal with these kinds of trauma.
> 
> Please let me know if I need to include another warning. I appreciate critique and criticism, but also I know I write for my own enjoyment and fun.

**Author's Note:**

> Character death warnings include Sheriff Stilinski, at the beginning of the story, and Jackson, at the end. Neither are particularly gory. 
> 
> Stiles is turned when he leaves for school on the East Coast, and is captured and taken to a underground encampment that experiments on werewolves and attempts to turn them into weapons, but werewolves are not known to the greater public. 
> 
> There is a lot of content containing mentions of past torture, instances of rape and infanticide, and psychological effects of torture. For instance, Stiles explains what happens to him, or will suddenly have a story about being tortured from when he was captured. There are instances where he is depressed or dealing with depression, as well as night terrors and sleeplessness. It is not mentioned in the story whether he is sexually assaulted or not, but it could be inferred.
> 
> Near the end of the story, Derek is attacked and tortured by a group of hunters. 
> 
> All of these characters in this story are supportive but sometimes uneducated on how to help someone deal with these kinds of trauma. 
> 
> Please let me know if I need to include another warning. I appreciate critique and criticism, but also I know I write for my own enjoyment and fun.


End file.
